Kathleen Neal Cleaver was born in Dallas, Texas, on May 13, 1945. Her parents were both activists and college graduates of the University of Michigan. Her father was a sociology professor at Wiley College in Marshall, Texas, and her mother earned a master's degree in mathematics.  In 1966, she left college for a secretarial job with the New York office of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) after her friend from childhood, Sammy Younge, had been murdered by white supremacists. The shift of the movement was characterized by the change from "Freedom Now" to "Black Power." Cleaver had been trying to get involved with the movement since she was sixteen. Gloria Richardson, Diane Nash, and Ruby Doris Robinson are among the Civil Rights fighters that inspired her to be involved in change and question the role of gender.

 

Black Panther Party
Cleaver was in charge of organizing a student conference at Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee. At the conference, Cleaver met the minister of information for the Black Panther Party, Eldridge Cleaver, who was speaking at the conference. He had just gotten out of jail and published Soul on Ice. She moved to San Francisco in November 1967 to join the Black Panther Party, and just a month and a half later, right after Christmas, Eldridge and Kathleen had married.

 

 It was in San Francisco that Kathleen became the first female member of the Party's decision-making body. She also served as the National Press Secretary for the Black Panther Political Party. Notably, she organized the national campaign to free the Party's minister of defense, Huey Newton, who was jailed. Kathleen Neal Cleaver was among a small group of women who were prominent in the Black Panther Party, which included Elaine Brown and Ericka Huggins. During Kathleen Cleaver's time with the Party, she helped feed people, provided medical care to families, and took families to visit loved ones in prison. She also “helped put together healing retreats for women who had been in the Black Panther Party, women who had been living underground, who had been tortured, who had been exiled”

​

As a result of their involvement with the Black Panther Party, the Cleavers were often the target of police investigations. and after fellow Black Panther member Bobby Hutton was killed in a shootout following the initial exchange of gunfire. Charged with attempted murder, Eldridge Cleaver jumped bail to flee to Cuba and later went to Algeria.

 

Living in exile

Kathleen reunited with Eldridge in Algeria in 1969, where she gave birth to their first son, Maceo. A year later she gave birth to their daughter Joju Younghi Cleaver, while the family was in North Korea. In 1971, Huey Newton, a fellow party member, and Eldridge had a disagreement; this led to the separation as the Cleavers formed a new organization called the Revolutionary People's Communication Network. Eventually, Kathleen and the children moved back to New York. 

 

Life After

After leaving Eldridge, Kathleen Cleaver went back to university in 1981, receiving a full scholarship from Yale University. She graduated in 1984, Phi Beta Kappa and summa cum laude with a Bachelor of Arts degree in history. She decided she wanted to become a lawyer as she watched the Watergate Hearing in the early 1970s. She received her J.D. degree from Yale Law School in 1989.

​

 She is currently serving as a 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.

 

Cleaver has also worked for many years on and published her book Memories of Love and War. 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. She has also helped edit essays and 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, discuss issues and speak around the country.

​