Tuesday, October 21, 2008

Early Life - Background

Bobby Seale was raised from the age of six years old as a carpenter-builder and hunter-fisherman. He was born in Dallas Texas in 1936 and graduated from BERKELEY High school to become an architect. In High school he rejected "dumb street gangs" to identify with the historical plight of the Souix-Lakota Native Americans. After a four year stint [three years, ten months and eleven days] in the United States Airforce , stationed in Rapid City South Dakota at Ellesworth Air Force Base as an aircraft sheet metal mechanic, by March of 1959, he moved to Los Angeles practicing several skills and trades. In this three year interim while working in the Air Craft industry, Bobby Seale, was also, part time, a stand up comedian and jazz drummer and returned to the San Francisco-Oakland Area in 1961.

At age 26, by 1962 Bobby Seale was enrolled as an Engineering Design major at Merritt College in Oakland California, with full time night shift employment at Kaiser AeroSpace & Electronics as a Gemini Missile non-destruct parts inspector. It was that 1962 spring semester when Bobby Seale became interested in the civil rights protest movement, launching his personnel research, advocacy and study into the whole of African and African American peoples history of struggle for constitutional democratic civil-human rights. He was further inspired by the works, advocacy and protest actions of Martin Luther King Jr.; Nelson Mandella and Malcolm X.