Kathleen Neal Cleaver (May 13, 1945) is an American professor of law, known for her involvement with the Black Panther Party. Kathleen Neal was born in Memphis, Texas. Both of her parents had higher education; her father was asociology professor at Wiley College in Marshall, Texas and her mother had a master’s degree inmathematics. Soon after Kathleen was born, her father, Ernest Neal, accepted a job as the director of the Rural Life Council of Tuskegee Institute inAlabama. Six years later, Ernest joined the Foreign Service. The family moved abroad and lived in such countries as India, Liberia, Sierra Leone, and thePhilippines. Kathleen returned to the United States to attend a Quaker boarding school near Philadelphia, George School. She graduated with honors in 1963. She continued her education atOberlin College, and later transferred to Barnard College. In 1966, she left college for a secretarial job with the New York office of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). She was in charge of organizing a student conference at Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee. At the conference, Kathleen met the minister of information for the Black Panther Party,Eldridge Cleaver. She moved to San Francisco in November, 1967, to join the Black Panther Party. Kathleen Neal and Eldridge Cleaver were married on December 27, 1967. Cleaver became the communications secretary and the first female member of the Party’s decision-making body. She also served as the spokesperson and press secretary. Notably, she organized the national campaign to free the Party’s minister of defense,Huey Newton, who was jailed. In 1968 (the same year her husband ran for president on the Peace and Freedom ticket) she ran for Californias 18th state assembly district, also as a candidate of the Peace and Freedom party. Cleaver received 2,778 votes for 4.7% of the total vote, finishing third in a four candidate race. As a result of their involvement with the Black Panther Party, the Cleavers were often the target of police investigations. The Cleavers’ apartment was raided in 1968 before a Panther rally by the San Francisco Tactical Squad on the suspicion of hiding guns and ammunition. Later that year, Eldridge Cleaver staged a deliberate ambush of Oakland police officers during which two police officers were injured. Cleaver was wounded and fellow Black Panther member Bobby Huttonwas killed in a shootout following the initial exchange of gunfire. Charged with attempted murder, he jumped bail to flee to Cuba and later went to Algeria.
Posted on: Mon, 21 Apr 2014 20:06:16 +0000
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