Offering a colorfully historic account of the Black Panther Party, former chair and co-founder Bobby Seale spoke at Bascom Hall Friday.
Sponsored by the Wisconsin Union Directorate, UW-Madison Multicultural Council, Pathways to Excellence and the Wisconsin Black Student Union, the speech drew a racially diverse crowd.
Seale addressed the racially oppressive climate of the late 1960s and early 1970s, defending the Black Panther Party's role in the era as a counter-institutional force.
\This is a piece of American history,"" Seale said. ""Our Black Panther Party was a progressive party that crossed racial and ethnic lines.""
The Black Panther Party achieved notoriety during the Civil Rights Era as a black nationalist movement involved in several high-profile scuffles with the police. The group rejected credos of non-violence championed by other civil rights movements of the time, opting for a policy of self-defense.
Publicly denounced by such political personalities as J. Edgar Hoover and Ronald Reagan, the party nevertheless enjoyed a high recruitment among black Americans.
Clad in trademark black berets, black leather jackets and blue shirts, the Black Panthers were equally famous for their successful ""Free Breakfast for Children"" program in California public schools and following policemen on patrol with loaded shotguns, safeguarding against brutality.
""When we started as a ragtag organization, we decided we was going to observe the police,"" Seale said. Educating their ranks about proper legal procedure, the Black Panthers oversaw the police, ensuring they did not overstep their boundaries.
""We knew these laws. We taught our people them,"" Seale added.
While his speech focused mainly on the group's controversial history, Seale maintained the true revolution was not about guns, but cooperation.
""I believe in community control,"" Seale said.
""I think he definitely broke down a lot of people's misconceptions about what the Black Panthers were about,"" said UW-Madison senior Joe Maldonabo, a student supervisor at the Multicultural Student Center Satellite. ""[He knew] what his rights were as an American citizen and how he'd be able to best enforce that and monitor people that tried to violate his rights.""
Seale's account garnered positive reactions from the audience as well.
""It was kind of refreshing to hear history from the mouth of the person who was involved and not necessarily from reading from a book,"" UW-Madison senior Lyntrel Smith said. ""It was refreshing to talk to a primary source about a series of events, and get it from somebody else's perspective.\
