After moving around Texas, first to Dallas, then to San Antonio, and Port Arthur, Seale's family relocated to Codornices Village[7] in Albany, California, during the Great Migration when he was eight years old.

[9] Three years later, a court martial convicted him of fighting with a commanding officer[citation needed] at Ellsworth Air Force Base in South Dakota,[6] resulting in a bad conduct discharge.

[10] Seale subsequently worked as a sheet metal mechanic for various aerospace plants while studying for his high school diploma at night.

[11] After earning his high school diploma, Seale attended Merritt Community College where he studied engineering and politics until 1962.

[12] While at college, Bobby Seale joined the Afro-American Association (AAA), a group on the campus devoted to self-education about African and African-American history, along with conversations about philosophy, religion, economics, and politics, including aspects of black separatism.

In June 1966, Seale began working at the North Oakland Neighborhood Anti-Poverty Center in its summer youth program.

Seale's objective was to teach the youth in the program Black American History and also encourage their responsibility toward the people in their communities.

The two joined together in October 1966 to create the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, which adopted the late activist's slogan "freedom by any means necessary" as their own.

Prior to starting the Black Panther Party, Seale and Newton created a group known as the Soul Students Advisory Council.

[18] After the inception of Soul Students Advisory Council, Seale and Newton founded the group they are most identified with, the Black Panther Party.

They wanted to organize the black community to express their desires and needs in order to resist the racism and classism perpetuated by the system.

[21] During his time with the Panthers, Seale was kept under surveillance by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) as part of its illegal COINTELPRO program.

[33][34] He received the second-most votes in a field of nine candidates[6] but ultimately lost in a run-off with incumbent Mayor John Reading.

They defined decent education as the full history of the United States, including acknowledgement of the genocide and displacement of Native Americans and the enslavement of Africans.

Also, in 1987, he wrote a cookbook called Barbeque'n with Bobby Seale: Hickory & Mesquite Recipes, the proceeds going to various non-profit social organizations.

Bobby Seale was the central protagonist alongside Kathleen Cleaver, Jamal Joseph and Nile Rodgers in the 1999 theatrical documentary Public Enemy by Jens Meurer, which premiered at the Venice Film Festival.

Seale has also visited over 500 colleges to share his personal experiences as a Black Panther and to give advice to students interested in community organizing and social justice.

[citation needed] Since 2013, Seale has been seeking to produce a screenplay he wrote based on his autobiography, Seize the Time: The Eighth Defendant.