“Do you want to live on your knees or die on your feet?” solemn words spoken by activist, law professor and former Black Panther Party member Kathleen Cleaver. Kathleen is an iconic figure of the Black Power movement and a trailblazing advocate for social justice and equality. She is best known for her role in the Black Panther Party, where she served as the Communications Secretary and became one of the first women to hold a prominent leadership position in the organization. She joined the Black Panther Party in 1967, motivated by the urgency of the civil rights struggle and a desire to address systemic oppression.
Born Juette Kathleen Neal, on May 13, 1945, in Dallas, Texas to parents who were both activists. Her father, Ernest Eugene Neal, was a sociology professor at Wiley College in Marshall, Texas. Her mother, Pearl Juette Johnson, earned a master’s degree in mathematics. Three years after Kathleen was born, her father accepted a job as the director of the Rural Life Council of Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, and they moved to a predominantly segregated, middle class community. Years later, Ernest joined the Foreign Service. The family moved abroad and lived in such countries as India, Liberia, Sierra Leone, and the Philippines. Spending time in India exposed Kathleen to different beliefs, including socialism, communism, and nationalism. The family returned to the United States after her brother died from leukaemia.
Kathleen attended George School, a Quaker boarding school near Philadelphia, which had just been desegregated. In 1963, she graduated with honors. She continued her education at Oberlin College and later transferred to Barnard College.
Her activism began in 1966, when she left college to work for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in New York City, after her friend from childhood had been murdered by white supremacists. She organized a student conference at Fisk University, and at this conference she met Eldridge Cleaver, Minister of Information for the Black Panther Party. They moved to San Francisco and married in late 1967. Kathleen became the Communications Secretary and was the first woman in the Party’s leadership group.
Kathleen played a key role in articulating the Panthers’ vision of self-determination and community empowerment. Kathleen was instrumental in organizing rallies, creating awareness campaigns, and serving as the public face of the Panthers in the media. Her advocacy extended beyond the U.S., as she worked to build international solidarity for the Black liberation movement.
Following a series of shootouts with police and other reported contraversial activity, Eldridge fled the country in 1968 and Kathleen joined him a year later. The couple lived in Cuba, Algeria, France, and North Korea. In 1969, she gave birth to their first son, Maceo, soon after arriving in Algeria. In 1970, she gave birth to their daughter Joju Younghi Cleaver, while the family was in North Korea.
In 1968. the couple moved back to the United States, where Eldridge was arrested and tried for the shoot-out. He was found guilty of assault and sentenced to five years’ probation and 2,000 hours of community service. Freed on bail in 1976, Eldridge’s legal situation was not resolved until 1980.
In 1981, Kathleen obtained a scholarship to Yale University. In 1984, she graduated Phi Beta Kappa and summa cum laude with a Bachelor of Arts degree in history. Three years later, she divorced Eldridge.
She had decided she wanted to become a lawyer, therefore, she continued her education and earned a law degree at Yale Law School in 1989. Since then, Kathleen has held multiple professorships and also worked as a law clerk in the U.S. Court of Appeals. She is currently a senior lecturer at the Emory University School of Law.
In 2005, Cleaver was selected an inaugural Fletcher Foundation Fellow. She then worked as a Senior Research Associate at the Yale Law School, and a Senior Lecturer in the African American Studies department at Yale University. She is currently serving as senior lecturer at Emory University School of Law. In addition to her career, she works on numerous campaigns, including freedom for death-row inmate Mumia Abu-Jamal and habeas corpus for Geronimo Pratt.
As a legal scholar and professor, Kathleen has written extensively on race, gender, and social movements. For many years she worked on and published a memoir titled Memories of Love and War. Her writings appeared in multiple newspapers and magazines including Ramparts, The Black Panther, The Village Voice, The Boston Globe, and Transition, and she has contributed scholarly essays to the books Critical Race Feminism, Critical White Studies, The Promise of Multiculturalism, and The Black Panther Party Reconsidered. She has also helped edit essays and a writing done by Eldridge Cleaver, Target Zero: A Life in the Writing.
She and other former members of the Black Panther Party continue to meet and discuss issues, helping to preserve the legacy of the Black Panther Party while inspiring new generations of activists. Kathleen remains a vital voice in discussions about race, gender, and justice.
Quotes:
“We have to see the value in ourselves, in our own culture, and in our own power.”
“Do you want to live on your knees or die on your feet?”
“There’s so many black people, and we’ve been here so long, and we’ve been through everything that they have had conceivably to do to us, that we must have some pretty stable, powerful survival skills. And in fact, I think we should study what our skills and survival are, and try and expand on that.”
“Yes. Yes. We were right. That’s not sufficient, to be right. Tom Paine was right. But the American Constitution didn’t reflect his views. You have to have institutional, corporate, financial, military power. And on the other hand, you have to have the mass support of people, their hearts and their minds and their beliefs.”
“This brother here, myself, all of us, where born with our hair like this and we just wear it like this. Because, it’s natural. Because, the reason for it, you might say, is like a new awareness among black people that their own natural appearance, physical appearance, is beautiful. It’s pleasing to them. The women want to please men and if men accept it as beautiful, then women will do it.”
“What we were trying to do was set forth a vision of a society where Black people were free, where we could control our own lives, and where we could build a future that was better than the one we inherited.”
“The Panthers were not just about Black power for Black people; it was about power for all oppressed people.”
“For so many, many years, we were told that only white people were beautiful. Only straight hair, light eyes, light skin, was beautiful. And so, black women would try everything they could to straighten their hair, lighten their skin, to look as much like white women. And the black men would let it be known that thought white women were beautiful. And they’d say they didn’t want any ugly black woman with short hair. This whole thing. But, this has changed; because, black people are aware, now, that their own appearance is beautiful. They’re proud of it. And white people are aware of it too; because, white people now want a natural wig. They want wigs like this. Dig it. Isn’t it beautiful? Alright!”
Sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kathleen_Cleaver
www.imdb.com/title/tt0209942/characters/nm0165900
www.quotes.net/citizen-quote/174052
www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/race/interviews/kcleaver.html
Credits:
Recreate Model: Alliyah Muhammad
Photographer & Editor of Recreated Photo: Jasmine Mallory
recreate.ink 