1960s rebel Bobby Seale to reissue ‘Seize the Time’ memoir of Black Panther Party

By Hillel Italie

Contributing Writer

NEW YORK (AP) — As Black Panther co-founder Bobby Seale nears his 90th birthday, he is set to reissue his 1970 jailhouse memoir “Seize the Time” and follow it up with a new book, “I, Bobby.”

“Every time somebody tells my story wrong, a piece of the movement gets buried with the lie,” Seale said in a statement issued by Blackstone Publishing. “‘Seize the Time’ was the blueprint and the start. ‘I, Bobby’ is me finishing what I started — with my own voice, my own memory and my own words.”

“Seize the Time” will come out in February, and “I, Bobby” toward the end of 2027.

Seale, who turns 90 next month, was in a San Francisco County jail in the late 1960s on charges related to two separate trials. At the time, he began relating to a local journalist his account of the militant organization he and Huey P. Newton started in 1966 and the principles it advocated for revolutionary change.

“Seize the Time,” which had fallen out of print in recent years, will include an introduction by actor-comedian D.L. Hughley and will be available for the first time in e-book and audio editions.

The Panthers, labeled by then-FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover as the country’s “greatest threat to internal security,” peaked in the late 1960s and declined through the next decade amid violent personal and political divisions and FBI infiltration. Newton disbanded the Panthers in the early 1980s, years after Seale had already left.

Seale has since taught Black studies at Temple University, worked with young activists and released a handful of books, including “Power to the People: The World of the Black Panthers,” a collaboration with photographer Stephen Shames published in 2016.

He served in the Illinois House of Representatives from 1993 through 2023 and holds the distinction of being the only politician to have defeated Barack Obama in an election, which he did in the 2000 Democratic primary for Illinois’ 1st Congressional District.

In “I, Bobby,” Seale will revisit the “internal fractures, government persecution, and enduring legacy while allowing Seale to set the record straight on his life once and for all,” according to Blackstone.

Hillel Italie writes for the Associated Press. Wave staff contributed to this report.