Kathleen Neal Cleaver was born in Dallas, Texas and spent much of her childhood living abroad with her family due to her father’s position in the Foreign Service. After the family returned to the United States, she attended a Quaker boarding school and later attended Oberlin College and Barnard College. Her activism began when she left college to work for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in New York City. 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.
Following a series of shootouts with police and other reported criminal activity, Eldridge fled the country in 1968 and Kathleen joined him a year later. The couple lived in Cuba, Algeria, France, and North Korea. When they returned to the United States, Eldridge was again tied up in litigation for previous activity. Kathleen obtained a scholarship to Yale University and graduated with honors and a history degree in 1984. She divorced Eldridge in 1987, then earned a law degree at Yale Law School. 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.
