31 Facts About Kathleen Cleaver

Kathleen Neal Cleaver was born on May 13,1945 and is an American law professor and activist, known for her involvement with the Black Power movement and the Black Panther Party.

Juette Kathleen Neal was born in Dallas, Texas, on May 13,1945.

Kathleen Cleaver's parents were both activists and college graduates of the University of Michigan.

Kathleen Cleaver's father, Ernest Eugene Neal, was a sociology professor at Wiley College in Marshall, Texas, and her mother, Pearl Juette Johnson, earned a master's degree in mathematics.

Three years after Kathleen Cleaver 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.

Kathleen Cleaver attended George School, a Quaker boarding school near Philadelphia, which had just been desegregated.

Kathleen Cleaver continued her education at Oberlin College and later transferred to Barnard College.

Kathleen Cleaver was in charge of organizing a student conference at Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee.

Kathleen Cleaver had just gotten out of jail where he had written Soul on Ice.

Kathleen Cleaver moved to San Francisco in November 1967 to join the Black Panther Party, and after Christmas, Eldridge and Kathleen married.

Kathleen Cleaver joined about three to four weeks after Huey Newton was charged for killing an Oakland policeman in a pre-dawn shootout.

Kathleen Cleaver applied everything that she learned from the SNCC to the Black Panther Party.

Kathleen Cleaver created the position herself, motivated by Julian Bond in SNCC.

Kathleen Cleaver had a difficult time healing from the passing of so many of her colleagues and was emotionally scarred.

Later that year, Eldridge Kathleen Cleaver was said to have staged an ambush of Oakland police officers during which two police officers were injured.

Kathleen Cleaver was wounded and fellow Black Panther member Bobby Hutton was killed in a shootout following the initial exchange of gunfire.

When Eldridge Kathleen Cleaver returned to the United States, he stated the shootout was a deliberate ambush against police.

Kathleen Cleaver was sentenced to community service after getting charged with three counts of assault against three Oakland police officers.

Kathleen Cleaver gave birth to their first son, Maceo, soon after arriving in Algeria.

Eldridge had increasingly found himself at odds with Huey Newton, one of the party's co-founders and leaders, over the direction the group should take; Newton, recently out of jail, was channeling resources into re-establishing the community outreach "survival programmes", whereas Kathleen Cleaver favoured a more direct, and at times violent, approach.

Kathleen Cleaver left for the United States later that year to arrange Eldridge's return and raise a defence fund.

Kathleen Cleaver was sentenced to five years' probation and 2,000 hours of community service.

Kathleen Cleaver went to work on the Eldridge Kathleen Cleaver Defense Fund, and he was freed on bail in 1976.

Kathleen Cleaver left Eldridge in 1981 and went back to university, receiving a full scholarship from Yale University.

Kathleen Cleaver had decided she wanted to become a lawyer as she watched the Watergate Hearings in the early 1970s.

In 2005, Kathleen Cleaver was selected an inaugural Fletcher Foundation Fellow.

Kathleen Cleaver 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.

Kathleen Cleaver is currently serving as senior lecturer at Emory University School of Law.

Kathleen Cleaver has worked for many years on and published a memoir titled Memories of Love and War.

Kathleen Cleaver has had her writing appear 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.

Kathleen Cleaver has helped edit essays and a writing done by Eldridge Cleaver, Target Zero: A Life in the Writing.