Robert George Seale was born October 22, 1936 in Dallas, Texas. Seale was one of three kids. His mother was a stay at home mom and his father was a carpenter in Dallas. After moving around Texas a few times, the family moved to Oakland, CA during WWII. Seale attended Berkeley High School and joined the U.S Air Force and was there three years before he was discharged for fighting with an officer. When he went back to Oakland, he began attending night school to earn his high school diploma.In 1962, at the age of 25, Seale began attending Merritt College, a community college located near the Berkeley city-limits. There, he joined the Afro-American Association and met Huey Newton, with whom he later co-founded the Black Panther Party. Seale and Newton were heavily inspired by Malcolm X and his teachings. The two joined together to create the Black Panther Party in 1966 and adopted the slogan,” freedom by any means necessary”.
Bobby Seale was one of the original “Chicago Eight” defendants charged with conspiracy during the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, but the evidence against Seale was slim. The judge though sentenced him for four years for his outbursts during trial .While serving his four-year sentence, Seale was put on trial again in 1970 in the New Haven Black Panther trials. Several officers of the Panther organization had murdered a fellow Panther. The leader of the murder plan, George Sams, Jr., testified that he had been ordered to kill the Panther by Seale himself. The jury was unable to reach a verdict in Seale’s trial, and the charges were eventually dropped. Seale was released from prison in 1972. http://www.gusd120.k12.il.us/high/academics/Business/movements/seale.html