SENTINEL: I even had a problem with the title. I felt it should be called The Chicago 8, as the defendants were known collectively, not Chicago 10.
BS: I think it was a bad title, too. It should have been The Chicago 7 or The Chicago 8, preferably, the latter, because that's the historical reference point for the average person who knows something about the Sixties. It reminds me how in 1988 I put a bad title on my own cookbook, calling it just “Barbeque'n with Bobby.” Only in small letters at the bottom did it say “recipes by Bobby Seale.” The title should have been Barbeque'n with Bobby Seale, because 100 million peo ple know my name. So, that was bad marketing on my part.

SENTINEL: Other than the title and not using your voice, what did you think of Chicago 10?
BS: I thought it was pretty good, for a doc. It could have been about ten minutes longer to include more about what happened to me when I was in lockup, because I was in jail the whole time of the trial. The other seven defendants were out on bail, except for Jerry Rubin for three weeks.

SENTINEL: Why do you think Judge Hoffman had you bound and gagged, and had your trial separated? Do you think he got an order from above, from someone like J. Edgar Hoover?
BS: Nah, he just couldn't handle me. He kept trying to say that William Kunstler was my lawyer. I kept telling him that Kunstler was not my lawyer. He and I went around and around arguing about that.

SENTINEL: Charles Garry was your attorney, right?
BS: Yeah, but Charles Garry was in the hospital recovering from a gall bladder operation. So, I had made a motion to defend myself at the beginning of the trial, before the jury had heard even one shred of evidence, since my lawyer wasn't there. Every time anyone would mention my name in the courtroom, I would jump up out of my chair and yell, “I object! I object, because my lawyer, Charles R. Garry, is not present.” He'd order me, “Sit down, Mr. Seale.” And I'd respond, “No, I want the record to reflect that I am objecting, and I am going to continue to object because you denied me my right to defend myself.” So, he chained, shackled and gagged me for three days, until finally the press went against him.

SENTINEL: Did you behave yourself after the restraints came off?
BS: No. Fo r instance, after the defense attorneys finished cross-examining an FBI agent on the witness stand, the judge would say, “Are there any more questions?” I would jump up and say, “Well, I want cross-examine the witness.” And I'd walk over to the lectern and say, “Looka here, what the hell were you doing following me around in the first damn place?” I wasn't a learned lawyer, but I but I was still doing my best to defend myself by asking logical questions. The judge would interrupt and say, “No, no, no, you don't have to answer him” And I'd ask, “Why not? Why shouldn't he have to answer the question? I've been denied the right to defend myself. Somebody has to answer these pointed questions if I'm going to be given a fair chance to prove my innocence.” At that point, Hoffman decided to charge me with 16 counts of contempt, and to sever my trial from that of the others. So, really, he got rid of me because he couldn't handle me.

SENTINEL: Do you think he would have had you bound, gagged and shackled, if you weren't black?
BS: I don't know. That=E 2s hard to say. The fact that I was a Black Panther, a political revolutionary, had a lot more to do with the mentality of Judge Julius Hoffman, and his, quote-unquote, putting Bobby Seale the Black Panther leader down. In other words, J. Edgar Hoover, the FBI, the right-wing, the prosecution, the Nixon Administration, etcetera had all declared me and the other defendants a threat to the internal security of America. The government hated us. And Hoffman knew this. So, his thinking in gagging me was “I'm going to gag this Black Panther.”

SENTINEL: I was fifteen in the 1968, and like the typical black teenager, the Panthers became my heroes after Martin Luther King was assassinated. We saw where non-violence and passive resistance would get a pacifist begging for equality in a racist society.
BS: Before King was killed, my friend Huey was in jail. To that point, I had only organized about 400 Black Panther Party members up and down the West Coast, between San Diego and Seattle. There were no other branches or chapters elsewhere in the country. Alright? Then, in April, 1968 King is murdered, and by late May, when schools start letting out, I begin getting a flood of people into the organization, folks flying from cities all over the nation into Oakland to talk to me and the central committee about setting up new chapters in their hometowns. Young black people were reacting to the fact that Dr. Martin Luther King had been killed. That tragedy enabled my organization to spread across the country. By November, I had 5,000 members and 49 branches. That's 49 cities that we operated offices of the Black Panther Party in. We had the Free Breakfast for Children Program, free Sickle Cell Anemia Testing and Free Preventative Medical Healthcare Clinics in every last one of them. These programs organized and unified people on the grassroots level in the black communities where we operated. And it is a real threat to the power structure, when you can organize and unify people around something concrete. Do you see what I'm getting at?

Last update: 07-31-2008 11:11

Published in : Entertainment, Personalities

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