Seale discussed a wide range of topics, from the history of the Black Panther Party, to his family history, to his educational background, to his opinions on the current Bush administration and Hurricane Katrina. The central theme of his speech, however, was that the history of the BPP has been greatly distorted by the government and the press, and he sought to correct those misconceptions in his speech.
The lecture provided a detailed account of the forces behind his and Huey Newton's 1966 creation of the Black Panther Party for Self Defense, which later shortened its name to the Black Panther Party.
"If you go back and read the establishment press, you're going to get a large distorted view of what we were about," Seale said. "They did not tell you that I was an engineer. They did not tell you that I worked in the Gemini Missile Program, that I was a hunter and a fisherman, that I was an expert barbecue cook. All they told you was that I was a hoodlum and a thug."
Popular images of the BPP depict members as violent black revolutionaries. Seale alleged that in 1966 the Mayor of Chicago announced that members of the BPP "hated all white people, and ran around killing white people."
As a result of what he considered a smear campaign, Seale said jokingly, "gun sales in the Chicago community increased by 200 percent."
The truth, Seale argued, was that he and Huey Newton, as young college and graduate students, gathered a group of like-minded black people, educated them about gun laws and monitored police activity for six months. Influenced by the frequency of police brutality against young black men, BPP members patrolled their neighborhoods with rifles to monitor police behavior as a means of ensuring that police did not break the law or abuse their power. These patrol activities, Seale said, were completely legal.
Newton, who Seale called "a stickler for doing things legally," was a second-year student in law school when the pair drafted their ten-point platform to officially create the BPP, and so knew the minutia of gun laws and the Constitution. Due to their diligent attention to lawfulness, Seale said, members of the BPP won nearly 90 percent of court cases they were in.
The organization, which began as a group of a dozen or so students, eventually grew to include chapters in 48 states across the country. By 1969, the group's newspaper had a circulation of over 400,000.
Seale talked about BPP service projects known as "survival programs," such as providing breakfast for children and testing people for sickle-cell anemia, among others.
"We got our reputation in the community for serving the community." he said.
Seale advertised five books about the BPP that provided accurate accounts of the party's activities and agenda, and told the audience they were for sale after the speech.
"It's one thing for me to lecture at you, it's another thing for me to give you relevant sources of information for you to continue learning," he said.
A brief question and answer period followed the lecture. One male audience member asked Seale to comment on misogyny among Black Panthers.
"By 1968, 65 percent of membership was black female," Seale said. "Sisters were probably my top coordinators. It was a dynamic organization, and women were key."
The event, titled "An Evening with Bobby Seale," was a Black History Month presentation sponsored by the Afro-American Society.
"[We invited Seale because] he has a rich history that should be shared," Afro-American Society President Robert Cheeks '07 said. "He is one of the most influential leaders of the Civil Rights Movement."
The event was co-sponsored by the AAAS Department, Africaso, the Bildner Endowment Grant, the Committee on Student Organizations, the Office of Pluralism and Leadership and the Tucker Foundation.
