Bobby Seale
Bobby Seale
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About Bobby Seale
(born October 22, 1937) is an American civil rights activist, who along with Dr. Huey P. Newton co-founded the Black Panther Party For Self Defense in 1966. Seale's membership as a college student in the African American Association is said to have been inspired him to start the Black Panthers, which at one point had over 5000 members. Seale went on to become the chairman of the party and underwent FBI surveillance as part of its COINTELPRO program. He was one of the original "Chicago Eight" defendants charged with conspiracy and inciting to riot, in the wake of the 1968 Democratic National Convention, in Chicago. Judge Julius Hoffman sentenced him to four years of imprisonment for contempt because of his outbursts, and eventually ordered Seale severed from the case, hence the "Chicago Seven". During one of the trials Bobby Seale's many outbursts led the judge to have him bound and gagged, as commemorated in the song "Chicago" written by Graham Nash and mentioned in the poem and song H2Ogate Blues by Gil Scott-Heron. Seale was tried in 1970 in the New Haven Black Panther trials for the murder of Alex Rackley and acquitted by a hung jury. The trials were widely decried as an example of political repression by such relative moderates as Yale University president Kingman Brewster, Jr., and were accompanied by a large demonstration in New Haven, Connecticut, on May Day, 1970, which coincided with the beginning of the American college student strike of May, 1970. In 2002, he began dedicating his time to Reach!, a group focused on youth education programs.
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