Civil-rights activist and founder of the Black Panther Party Bobby Seale spoke to students Friday at Bascom Hall about the founding of the organization and its role in America through the 1960s.

Seale, who founded the party with Huey Newton in October 1966 in Oakland, Calif., said the Black Panthers began in the middle of the civil-rights movement at a time when he witnessed a lot of police brutality toward African-American demonstrators.

“We tried to create a party to unify the black community,” Seale said. “The Black Panthers believed in organizing and we were opposed to spontaneous riots.”

Seale quit his engineering job working on the Gemini Missile Program after the death of President John F. Kennedy. The assassination of Kennedy and the death of Malcolm X inspired Seale to begin working at a grassroots level and organize programs against institutionalized racism, he said.

“I was tired of all the talk, I wanted organization,” Seale said. “The death of Malcolm X caused me to go on a one-man riot to get rid of arm-chair revolutionaries.”

Seale and Newton then founded the Black History Fact Group and held a rally against the Vietnam War draft.

“Why fight in a war when [African-American] rights are not being respected?” Seale said.

At the rally, Seale said he got into a fight with the police and was arrested. He received one year of probation and the night after court, he and Newton met and founded the Black Panther Party. Seale and Newton wrote a 10-point program calling for education, full employment, fair treatment in courts and other rights for African Americans.

Seale said their first endeavor was to deal with the issue of police brutality.

“We decided we would observe police,” Seale said, “Huey was in law school so we knew every law.”

After the death of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Seale said the Panthers’ membership went from 200 to 5,000 and the group began working for social change. One example of a program started by the organization was free breakfast for school children.

Prior to his work in civil rights, Seale was an architect, an engineer and a standup comedian. He said he knew nothing about African-American history until he began to educate himself in 1962 after seeing King speak in Oakland.

“I began to read and digest books — it was all fantastic to me,” Seale said.

Despite his efforts, Seale said people such as former FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover and California-governor-turned-U.S.-President Ronald Reagan made him out to be a hoodlum and a thug during the ’60s.

People should continue efforts toward social change, especially economic change, according to Seale.

“We need more policies that make greater human sense,” Seale said.

Seale added “disinformation” campaigns continue today and need to come to an end.

UW junior Andrew Aleckson said he enjoyed hearing Seale speak.

“It was really interesting to hear his experience in the Black Panther Party,” Aleckson said. “I did not know much about it, so it was good to hear a first-person perspective.”