The demand for black power in the late 1960s meant different
things to different groups within the black community.
For the mildest of its mouthers, the slogan was a call for black
economic self-sufficiency and political power within the American
system. For others, it meant complete racial separatism and cultural
nationalism. For still others, it meant a complete anticapi
talist revolution in the Marxist model, except that where Marx
thought the revolutionary vanguard would emerge from the
industrial working class, Marxist black revolutionaries saw the
revolution emerging from the black ghetto underclass. The Black
Panthers, who were believed by many to be the most aggressively
militant and revolutionary of the black organizations of the
period, embraced the latter position.
Seize the Time was written by Bobby Seale, then chairman of
the Black Panther Party, to clear up misunderstandings on the
part of the public by thoroughly explaining the organization's
origin, activities, and goals. The Black Panther Party began in
Oakland, California, in October 1966, founded by Scale and the
late Hucy P. Newton, who would go on to be its most visible and
controversial leader. In contrast to the nonviolent methods being
advocated by other activist groups of the time, the Panthers
openly advocated the use of violence to achieve their goals,
putting into action their interpretation of Malcolm X's "by any
means necessary" philosophy. Starting from the theory that the
police—the arm of the suppressive white establishment in the
ghetto—must be monitored by blacks, they took to the streets
with loaded cameras and guns, thus claiming for themselves and
the black youths of the ghetto the respect and due process they
felt was lacking. It also unleashed an era of increasingly violent
activity by revolutionaries of all colors that was met with a fierce
backlash on the part of the government.
Seize the Time was written while Seale was in San Francisco
State Prison, during a period when nearly every black activist
organization was under attack by government agencies. Scale's
book is written in a language and style that reflect the urgency,
passion, and justifiable paranoia of that turbulent era. While the
Panthers were undermined by forces without and within, Seize
the Time, with its urgent call for black self-defense and black
pride, remains a compelling account of one manifestation of an
oppressed people's continuing struggle for liberation.
