An ongoing illustrative history study
This piece originally posted 3/23/2021
Prelude | 72 | 73 | 74 | 75 | 76 | 77 | 78 | 79 | 80 | Email |
|---|
"I didn't set out to be successful. I set out to make revolutionary change, and really didn't think I'd live past 27. So every year past 27, it's like, wow!"
Kathleen Neal (later Cleaver) was born in 1945, into a family of career academics (her father was a sociology professor and her mother held a Master's in mathematics), and a great deal of overseas living (including the Philippines, Liberia, and India). In 1966 while a student at Oberlin College, heartbroken by the murder of her friend Sammy Younge, Jr. (see Lesson #63 in this series), Kathleen joined the SNCC, in a role which entailed a great deal of travel throughout the South. A year later, during a trip to Tennessee she met Eldridge Cleaver, Minister of Information for the nascent 'Black Panther Party for Self-Defense,' as it was then known. The two quickly fell in love and married by December of that year (1967). The couple moved to San Francisco and Kathleen became the Communications Secretary for the Panthers. It goes without saying that, due to their affiliation with such a controversial organization, that the Cleavers were regularly targeted for harassment by law enforcement --in fact they were among the very first civil rights figures specifically targeted by the FBI's notorious COINTELPRO program of infiltration and disinformation.
In 1968, while running for President on the Peace and Freedom party ticket, Eldridge Cleaver was severely wounded during a shootout between Black Panthers and Oakland police. Facing attempted murder charges, he skipped bail and fled the U.S. along with Kathleen, living in exile in Cuba, then Algeria, and ultimately France. While overseas the Cleavers clashed philosophically with Panthers founder Huey Newton, and by 1971 had been banned from the party. This discord carried over into several ideological splits within the party and eventually the Cleavers returned to the U.S. in 1975 --Eldridge was promptly jailed and Kathleen began the Eldridge Cleaver Defense Fund, securing his release in 1976. The couple later separated in 1981.
Kathleen Cleaver went on to graduate from Yale University Law School, then herself taught law at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law and also at the Emory University School of Law (where she continues to lecture to this day). She was also a senior lecturer in African-American Studies at Yale. Today at the age of 75, Cleaver continues to be a fierce advocate for racial issues, feminism, and economic equality.
Read a particularly compelling transcript of a PBS interview with Cleaver in 1997:
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/race/interviews/kcleaver.html
INTERVIEWER: So you're optimistic about the future?
CLEAVER: That's pushing it.
Next page - Lesson 77: Violette Neatley Anderson