Bobby Seale at the Oakland auditorium

Chairman of the Black Panther Party, brother Huey's right hand man: Bobby Seale. Bring him on! [applause] Brothers and sisters, I want to, tonight, have the chance to tell you in large mass something about brother Huey P. Newton, a Black man that I have been knowing for about eight years. A Black man who first introduced me to what Black nationalism was all about. A Black man that I have been closely associated with for the last three years in the organizing of a black people's

party on a level that dealt with Black people's problems. To explain to you who brother Huey P. Newton is in his soul, I got to explain to you also your soul, your needs, your political desires and needs because that is Huey's soul. [applause] You know, I met Huey, and he told me that he first learned how to read real good when he was about 16 or 17 when he was coming out of high school. One of these counselors in school told him he couldn't be college material. So Huey got mad. He didn't like no white man tell him what he couldn't do. And Huey learned how to read. And Huey went to Oakland City College and I went right there with him, and Huey got a 4.0, that's a A in

sociology, psychology, political science, law. You run it on down, he got A's all the way through. And said "later" for the man, I know what I can do. [applause] Huey learned the need for Black people to develop a perspective and a understanding of our oppressive conditions. Now, when we first organized the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, he would say, "Bobby," he says, "we're going to draw up a basic platform, just basic. Black people can read." He says, we don't want to go real elaborate with all these essays and dissertations and all this stuff cause the brother gone look at that and he gonna say say, man I ain't got time for that. I gotta go see what I can do for myself.

Just a basic platform that the mothers who struggle hard to raise us, that the fathers who worked hard, that the young brothers in school who come out of school semi-literate, saying, reading broken words. He say, we just want a basic platform to outline Black people's basic political desires and needs first. So we sit down. Huey say we want freedom, we want power to determine the destiny of our Black community. Number two: we want full employment for our people. Number three: we want one housing fit, decent housing fit for shelter of human beings. Number four: we want all Black men to be exempt from military service. Number five: [applause] We want decent education for our Black people in our community that teaches us the true nature of this decadent racist society and to

teach Black people and our young Black brothers and sisters their place in this society because if they don't know their place in society and in the world, they can't relate to anything else. Number six: We want an end to the robbery by the white racist businessmen of Black people and the Black peoples in their communities. Number seven: we want an immediate end to police brutality and murder of Black people. [applause] Number eight: we want all Black men held in county, state, federal jails and prisons to be released because they have not had a fair trial because they've been tried by all white juries, and that's just like being tried in Germany being a Jew. [applause] We want Black people, number nine, when brought to trial to be tried by members of their peers and a peer being one

who comes from the same economic, social, religious, historical, and racial background, that, in fact, the Black people, if the United States government and the courts and the local courts did this, theey would have to choose Black people from the Black community to sit up on the jury. They'd have to choose some of them mothers who've been working 20 years in Ms. Anne's kitchen scrubbing floors like my mother done done. [applause] They have to choose some of them hard working fathers. They have to choose some of those brothers who stand on the block out there wondering where they gone get a gig. They gone have to choose these Black people. And number 10, Huey say let's just summarize it. We want housing. We want clothing. We want education. We want justice. And we want peace. It's the basic platform. In case you never knew it or not, of all the things that you've heard in the press. Of

all the derogatory statements that's been made in the press about brother Huey P. Newton and I. Of all these derogatory statements, was to guide you away from seeing this basic platform that Huey was talking about for his own people. [applause] We have learn to look through the white press. We have to learn to see what's going on. Now out of this platform, Huey P. Newton realized that it was necessary for us to start working on these points, these ten points, practically. Remember number seven? We want an immediate end to police brutality and murder of bBlack people. This is very, very important. Huey did a year and a half in law school after he got out of Merritt College with an associate arts degree in the social sciences. He articulated to brothers on the block, and he articulated in a manner where they understood it, what their rights were in law and how in

fact, we could exercise a position in the Black community to begin to show Black people how we could defend ourselves on point number seven. Now, the papers call the organization hoodlums and thugs. I'm going to show you how smart brother Huey is. He says now the paper's gone call us thugs and hoodlums. A lot of people ain't gone know what's happening. He said, but the brothers on the block, who the man been calling thugs and hoodlums for 400 years gone them some out of sight thugs and hoodlums up there. [applause] The brother on the block is gone say who is these thugs and hoodlums? In fact, them dudes look just like me. In fact, I know John, I know George Dow. In fact, I know Bobby Hutton. Hey man, I know that dude over there. Hey man, what you cats doing with them rods?

In other words, when the man call us nigger for 400 years with all this derogatory connotations, Huey was smart enough to know that Black people gone say, well they been calling us niggers, thugs, and hoodlums for 400 years. That ain't gone hurt me. I want to check out what these brothers is doing. [applause] [applause] The insight that Huey had and knowing how to deal with organizing Black people and knowing how to bring Black people together, now at the same time, many of our older brothers and sisters were going to say, they must really be thugs and hoodlums. But they talk about police brutality and many of you have related in one way or another to relatives or members of your family etc. to the conditions and how police brutality is, you would sit in your homes and say

yeah, we should have did it 400 years ago. We should have got out there and started defending ourselves in this fashion. Now, at the same time, many people get the notion that we were supposed to go out in the streets with 500 Black people lined up with guns and shoot it out with a 1,000 policemen. No, this wasn't the case at all. This was the case at all. On the contrary, every Black man in his home has a right to defend his home. It was necessary to bring to Black people the understanding that they were going to have to stand in defense of life, of community, of your children, of your mothers, of our young. We have to defend ourselves starting at point number seven because we don't end self-defense there. Because Huey say you still have to defend yourself against the gross unemployment we subjected to, against the indecent housing we subjected to,

against the indecent education that we getting, against the way Black men are drafted off into the military service after we fought in the Civil War 186,000, and World War II, World War I 350,000, in World War II 850,000, and all the way down to the Korean conflict. And now they got that giant Vietnam War, and they drafting our Black brothers off the block over there 90 miles an hour you say uh-uh. And they been promising us freedom for all these years, Huey said no. That's a very, very important point. [applause] Every Black man in this house should be against the war in Vietnam. He's got to be against the war in Vietnam because they killing our Black brothers over there. [applause] Huey brought it down to a practical level for us to try and understand. When Huey organized

these brothers, he didn't just run them out in the street with a zero understanding. Huey sit those brothers down and taught them 12 basic points of law on how to exercise their constitutional rights. Huey sit those brothers down to talk to them. Huey taught those brothers that it wasn't the gun that was dangerous. It's the person behind it that's dangerous. It's very important. Huey taught the brothers safety of those weapons. You haven't heard of one Black panther shooting another Black panther. Accidentally. [applause] But from the information in one appearance in court with Charles Garry the lawyer, he's saying that one cop down there shot the other cop where Huey was. [applause] Now look, the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense

is a revolutionary party. Revolution means that we've got to get down to the nitty gritty and change the situation that we in and don't miss any nits or any grits. That's very important. All the time. [applause] We also struggle for, to show you that it wasn't only the cops but we had to deal with many other things. Like a street light at Market and 55th Street. Three kids coming from Washington School had been two years prior. We got with the poverty program say it got to be a street light here. And if it don't be a street light out here, the panthers gone get right out here and we gone direct traffic. They say well you will tie the traffic. The traffic's just gone get tied up. Our little kids ain't gone get killed. [applause] We shot a petition in conjunction with members of the area there to the city council

and they send something back talking about, well, we can't put one up until late 1968. Say naw, we gone have to change this situation now. We going to the streets. Well, the street light is up early 1968 now. They don't like the Panthers messing with them no kinda way, you dig? I'm sayin that these programs have to involve not only the members of the Black Panther Party. They have to involve you as a whole. That when the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense starts coming to the Black community and starts knocking on your doors and starts leaving you literature and giving you information, factual information on this racist decadent system and running it down, when the Black Panther Party comes to your doors and leaves information concerning the fact that our Black brother Huey P. Newton has got to be set free, we want you to come down to the local defense fund committee for Huey and work and operate, if you want to work in the Black Panther Party, you gone be doing the same thing, cause the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense is also working in conjunction with the Huey P. Newton defense fund, it's all together. Every last one Black person in here has got to stand up right now and say he's a member of the defense fund, the legal defense

fund for Huey P. Newton. Now, I want to see how many Black people gone stand now. Let's free Huey. [applause] I give you a hand. I'm going to give you a hand. You're the heroes. Huey's going to call you the heroes. He's always going to call you the heroes. Black brothers and sisters, we're going to have some unity here. We're going to have some unity behind brother Huey P. Newton because he was trying to unify us to solve all of our problems. Huey was for us. The man has got Huey chained up. Watch where I point my finger. Did you see the building over there? Right in back, he's chained up in jail, right across the

street. When we announce Huey's court date appearances, you be there for a hour or a hour and a half and show us standing support that we should have Huey P. Newton set free. Be there brothers and sisters and tell your friends and explain to Black people what Huey P. Newton was doing with the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, what kind of organization it was. Let people know that it is necessary that we must unify on all levels and all the areas of oppression, we must deal with them. That right here in the confines of racist America, racism must be stopped. When the man walks up and says that we were anti-white. I scratch my head, I say you hear that dude say we anti-white, what does he mean by that? He says, well I mean you hate white people. I

say me, hate a white person? I said wait a minute man, let's back up a little bit. That your game. That's the Ku Klux Klans' game. I say that is the Ku Klux Klan's game to hate me and murder me because of the color of my skin. I say I wouldn't murder a person or brutalize them because of the color of their skin. I say yeah, we hate something alright. We hate the oppression that we live in. We hate cops beating Black people over their heads and murdering them. Thats what we hate. [applause] If you got enough energy to sit down and hate a white person just because of the color of their skin, you wasting a lot of energy. You better take that same energy and put it in some motion out there and start dealing with those oppressive conditions, and you gone find just what you hate and what you gone stop. [applause] Black people, we are organizing to stop racism, you dig it? When you stop

racism, you stop brutality and murder of Black people by the racist occupying army in our Black community. That's what gonna stop: what's being done to us. You dig it? Can you dig the white power structure and his racist police force? And how they've escalated the situation? That before Watts, there was 1,300 cops? Now there's 6,000 cars patrolling Black people? That in Oakland they had 350 cops just three and a half years ago? Now they got a thousand cops patrolling Black people. San Francisco's doubled its police force, and every area, major metropolis where Black people live all across this country, they've doubled, tripled, and quadrupled their police force, equipped them with tanks. Uh-uh, we've got to stop it brother, let's get together and unify. [applause] Brother Huey was concerned about the nation and the survival of Black people.

That's why tonight and your standing support, we are all gone be concerned about him. I saw a picture in the paper where it said one sister had a sign, says come see about Huey. And so every court date, I want everybody in his house to come see about Huey at that courthouse, cause we gone free him, free Huey, c'mon, free Huey. Free Huey! Free Huey! Free Huey! Free Huey! Now, before we go any farther, there's some sisters here. There's a lot more things I want to say to you. Maybe I should say a few more things to you. Maybe I should give some more information. I feel an adequate not doing that. I do really feel inadequate not doing that. Yeah, let's get on down the nitty gritty like I said. And I'm gone get the grits too, brother. Come on. And I'm with you. Look.

Let's go into a little detail. When a young Black man comes out of any one of these high schools around here, he's not taught -- now, watch how this power structure's tricky --, one iota about the white man's law. Then he plasters on TV that we supposed to respect the law. Then some racist cop, who brother Carmichael, done hip me to how the racist cops have come into the situation up here, because he says all down in the post offices all down South, they got brochures announcing jobs for cops in Oakland, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. All these racist pigs up here. See? And this same pig that comes from way down there, and also coming up here with his other brothers who've been up here, getting together out on the streets and walks up to a young Black man and says, boy, or nigger, where you going? And the cop either reaches for his billy club or reaches for his pistol, and a brother don't see no respect for him as a human being, what else can a brother do at that point, but say man, if you hit me with that club, I'm sorry, I ain't going

for it. You see, now look what happens here. The brother winds up busted. He gets put in jail. You read some junk in the paper. One occasion or the other, he's killed or murdered. He allegedly was burglarizing something, which is a bunch of bunk. That's where the cops come up with they story. Aw, he assaulted me, the cops say. And has passed on. But we got to learn to see to what's happening out there. When we go to the courts, where this brother done got busted, you walk up in municipal court, and I know a lot of y'all been out there. Walk up in there, and you know what you see in that court? Ninety percent Black people, and the other ones who ain't Black are poor whites and our Mexican brothers. You catch it? You catch it? They these cops are not in Piedmont brutalizing and intimidating white people. They are not in the Berkeley hills brutalizing and intimidating white people.

They are down in the Black ghetto where our communities are, where we have to have power to determine the destiny of our own community. Why shouldn't we have our own police station where we set up operations and organizations through the churches and everything else to choose our own policeman because when we choose our own policeman and we make the rule that that policeman have to live in our community, he ain't gonna be brutalizing too much. He got to come back home and sleep that night. [applause] These...this is the teachings of the Minister of Defense of the Black Panther Party, Huey P. Newton. This is, this is his teachings. They basic. And here, whether you know it or not, is where you start dealing with the Black revolution. When Huey says every Black man put a shotgun in your home, do you remember about the Smith family and how the cops raided the home of the Smith family? Do you remember how a young, one of his sons had a white friend who came down to a basement there where they

had a pool table, and he just walked in with the other young, with this Black Smith family and he had a white friend who walked down and some cops saw him go down there, so these cops all got together, radio up some more cops and busted in the house. They thought it was prostitution. You know what they did? They walked in the house on a man, his wife, and his children brutalized and beat the whole family up from child to mother the father broken arms, crushed skulls, and then the cops turned around and charged the unarmed family with assault on a police officer. What kind of crap is that? That's why a Black man needs a shotgun in his home. It's very important. You understand what I'm talking about? This is very, very important for us to recognize. That once... [applause] ...when we organize in this fashion, right there in our homes, we talking about power in our communities, to control our communities, you know? And once we let the man know, say look, we armed

from block to block and gone patrol you from our windows. And we not gone have you brutalizing none of our people in the streets. Do you realize what kind of power Black people have then? Because you begin to neutralize that police force cause them cops gone start riding shaky and scared. In fact, we are in a position then to demand that they withdraw from our community because they occupy our community just like a foreign troop occupies territory. [applause] Very important to understand. This is the political teachings of brother Huey, and see how basic it is? This is not hard to understand at all. Every time the power structure makes a political decision about any group of people, if the people disagree with the political decision that the power structure has made upon them, then the power structure gets guns and force and billy clubs and starts doubling and tripling police force and National Guard to

make you except those political decisions that's made when you try to disagree. The Vietnamese have had political decisions made upon them in their country and they've disagreed with them. So they say naw, we gone defend ourselves right here on our own land, and we want you to withdraw from our land. Now, all we've got to do is, we can parallel the situation, when we see all these racist cops off in our Black communities the way they are. But remember, that's only point seven of the program. But here is the key in terms of dealing with what real power is. Power starts here. When people try to say that green power is where it's at, let me hip you into something that brother Huey P. Newton knew. He said during the Civil War, there was the North and there was the South. The North had Yankee money, green power supposedly, and the South had Confederate money, green power on that end supposedly. He said but when the North outmaneuvered the South, and

the North had all the guns, they said, yo money ain't no more good. You don't even have no so-called green power. So I'm saying that the money is only a tool by which you manipulate the power. That's all. The real power is manifested in the police forces, the National Guardsman, these racists, who come down to occupy Black people in the community to maintain their oppression to try to make us stoop. When we in our homes, and I'm saying every Black brother in his house, every last one of you: put a shotgun in your home. Put a shotgun in your home. It's necessary. [applause] We will begin to deal in politics that way because Huey also says that politics is war without bloodshed, but

war is politics with bloodshed. Let's get down to the nitty gritty here and see what's happening here. A contradiction between a group of people, or might we way contradictions, disagreements, etc. You have two kinds of contradictions: antagonistic contradictions where there's fighting and where there's bloodshed, and you have non-antagonistic contradictions where there's arguing and debate. I'm pretty sure that Black people would prefer to have, in dealing with politics, non-antagonistic contradictions. But what's happened here? When the man escalates his police forces and doubles and triples them and murdering Black people in they community and shooting them down, that ain't non-antagonistic. That's very antagonistic cause he's shedding our blood. He has made war upon us. This is very. very important to understand where politics lies. We desire, by defending ourselves in our community by every man putting a shotgun

in his home, we desire non0antagonistic contradictions. But we must defend ourselves. So when those cops come into the community and get down wrong, first law is the law of survival. This is where it's at. We must organize. We must respect the gun in a fashion that it's the man behind the gun who's dangerous. And there are thousands and thousands of cops in this country who are very, very dangerous towards the Black community. [applause] So let's come to the surface and think. Let's come up to the surface of the whole situation. Black people in this country. War has been made upon them. Black people don't sit down, and say oh nothing's going to happen and hope nothing's going to happen. Don't sit down and let a spontaneous riot happen in the streets where

we get corralled a lot of us are shot up unorganized, when I say spontaneous. Black people organize. And Black leaders, you got them up here. I'm only trying to contribute to the leadership. I was forced out here and it's necessary for me to do it, and I'm gone do my job. I'm saying that Black leaders will get up and let the political power structure no where it's at and the changes we want, and that if that doesn't happen then you will have caused the political consequence in an organized fashion. The man doesn't have us outnumbered, he has us out-organized. Come on now. Come up to the surface. [applause] Now, let's go back to our brother Huey, concerning the situation. I'm going to ask you brothers and sisters now. We have sisters in the audience. All right, brothers and sisters. I want to say this here. Free Huey,

and Black Power. Black Power and you are the power. The Black Power to free Huey. So let's stand together. Let's free Huey. I want to thank you. [applause] [applause]