One of the most controversial black political activists of the 1960s, Bobby Seale co-founded the Black Panther Party. Devoted to African-American political and economic issues, the Panthers, with Seale as chairman, played a leading role in the social protests of the era. His eloquent radicalism won the group thousands of followers. But it also led to repeated brushes with law enforcement: the Panthers faced relentless surveillance, disruption, and legal prosecution by federal and state authorities. Seale himself was a defendant in the Chicago Eight political-protest trial in 1968, and later, in 1970, a murder defendant in a case involving a slain Panther member.

Born in Dallas, Texas, in 1936, Seale served as an aircraft structural mechanic in the U.S. Air Force before entering college in 1962. An engineering student at Merritt College in Oakland, California, he became enthralled with politics. Especially inspirational to him were the ideas on black liberation espoused...