Black Panther Trial

Pastel, 1971

Robert G. Seale, Black Panther known better as Bobby, was born in 1936 in Dallas and grew up in California. He served for three years in the Air Force and then attended Merritt College where he met Huey Newton, with whom he founded the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense in the mid-1960s. In 1969, he was indicted in Chicago with others for having conspired to disrupt the 1968 Democratic National Convention there. The trial in Judge Julius Hoffman's court saw him as a bound and gagged defendant, and he became a national sensation for having taken the lead in the inflammatory language and behavior that led the judge to separate his case from that of the others, declaring an individual mistrial, and sentencing him to four years in prison for his unmistakable contempt of court. Earlier in 1969, in New Haven, Connecticut, he had been arrested and charged with the crime of murder of a man alleged to be a member of the Black Panthers who was an informer.

Robert Templeton was commissioned by CBS News to make sketches during that trial and these are some of the results, two sketches of Seale and a scattering of sketches of the courtroom and its people. Seale wrote about his life in Seize the Time published in 1971, and it describes those days when the Panthers were "the vanguard of the North American revolution movement."

Bobby Seale

Pastel, 1971

28 x 28 Inches