Kathleen Cleaver’s Struggle and the Black Power Movement

“Perhaps people will stop repeating the human-made catastrophes of the past when we cease

being a- historical and truly learn from history’s lessons,” (the Boston Globe, 2006).

‘The stalwart legacy of the Black Panther Party continues as strong as ever, which is one

reason why the corporate-stream media, even in the 21st century, continues in its attempts to

distant and disfigure its legacy’. In October of 1966, the Black Panther Party was formed in

Oakland, California. It was initially organized in response to police brutality and the deplorable

social and economic conditions in Black communities throughout the United States. Active

political alliances were formed between the BPP and other radical and progressive organizations

around mutual concerns that affected the poor and disenfranchised people—no matter what their

color or gender. They developed a ten-point platform:

1. We want freedom. We want power to determine the destiny of our black community.

2. We want full employment for our people.

3. We want an end to the robbery by the CAPITALIST of our black community.

4. We want decent housing, fit for the shelter of human beings.

5. We want education for our people that exposed the true nature of the decadent American

Society. We want education that teaches us our true history and our role in the present-day

society.

6. We want all black men to be exempt from military service.

7. We want an immediate end to POLICE BRUTALITY and MURDER of black people.

8. We want freedom for all black men held in federal, state, county and city prisons and jails.

9. We want all black people when brought to trial, to be tried in court by a jury of their peer

group or people from their black communities, as defined by the Constitution of the

United States of America.

10. We want land, bread, housing, education, clothing, justice and peace. And as our major

political objective, a United Nations supervised plebiscite to be held throughout the black

colony in which only black colonial subjects will be allowed to participate, for the purpose

of determining the will of black people as to their national destiny.

When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bonds which have connected them with another, and to assume, among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men were created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that, whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute a new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to affect their safety and happiness… But, when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security.

POWER TO THE PEOPLE!

We should be able to see our constitution play out in the everyday realities of our world, but

that is not the truth of the matter. We live in a power structure that marginalizes certain people

because of their race and ethnicity. That includes the founders of this nation: the American

Indian. This nation has grown to become an ethnic melting pot; therefore we not feel justified in

our exclusion of certain races. We need to come together communally and reach out, not close

others out simply because of their inherited traits. We should be upholding the doctrines of this

Nation to the limit of our abilities. This nation has become an ethnic melting pot; we need to rise

above that uneducated fear of allowing others equal opportunity. Equality is a doctrine that this

nation was founded on which we need to uphold. All too often we forget what the truths are that

this nation was founded on. We shouldn’t disrupt the quality of life of others, where we have no

business to tread.

Kathleen C leaver was the first woman to become a highly visible leader in the militant Black

Panther Party and one of the few women to emerge as a nationwide symbol of the Black Power

Movement. From 1967 to 1971, Cleaver was the Panther’s communication secretary. She

worked closely with her husband, Eldridge Cleaver, and other Panther leaders to expand the

ranks of the party nationwide, while fending off a secret FBI campaign to destroy the Panthers.

Kathleen Neal was born in Dallas, Texas in 1945. Both her parents were well educated with

graduate degrees. Soon after she was born her father took a job as director of Rural Life Council

of Tuskegee Institute in Alabama. Six years later, Ernest joined the Foreign Service. The family

moved abroad living in India, Liberia, Sierra Leone and the Philippines. Kathleen returned to the

United States to attend the George School, a Quaker school in Pennsylvania, where she

graduated with honors in 1963. She then went on to Oberlin College, later transferring to

Barnard; an arm of Columbia University, where she graduated cum laude. And, in 1966, she

left school to become the secretary of the New York Office of the Student Nonviolent

Coordinating Committee.

While on a conference in Nashville, Tennessee, for which she was the organizer, she met the

Minister of information for the Black Panther Party, Eldridge Cleaver. In November of 1967 she

moved to San Francisco to join the Black Panther Party and the following month she and

Eldridge Cleaver were married. She became the communications secretary and the first female

member of the party’s decision-making body. Also serving as the spokes-person and press

secretary. She also organized the national campaign to free Huey Newton, who was jailed in

1968. As a result of their involvement with the Black Panther Party, the Cleavers were often the

target of police investigations. In 1968, the Cleaver’s apartment was raided on suspicion of

hiding guns and ammunition before a Panther rally in San Francisco. Later that year, the ambush

of Oakland police staged by Eldridge caused the death of Bobby Hutton and Cleaver being

wounded was charged with murder. He jumped bail and fled to Cuba with Kathleen, and later

went on to Algeria.

Later, in 1973, Kathleen came back to the United States to raise money for Eldridge’s

defense, which aided him enough to see him exonerated by 1980. The Black Panther Party was

founded on Malcolm X’s point of view; Mao Zedong’s motto of ‘picking up the gun’, along with

Frantz Fanton’s and Che Guevera’s theories of revolutionary violence. The program included

elements of power and self-determination within the black community. One of the Panther’s

initial activities was of an armed patrol of the Oakland police to ensure that they did not brutalize

or murder local residents, and also to keep the local residents informed of their legal rights.

On top of which, one of the most important functions of the party was to provide a number of

community services, such as free breakfasts for school children, free health clinics for the poor,

along with liberation youth schools. The Black Panthers regarded its survival programs as

contributing to the revolutionary, transformation of black consciousness an of America’s

repressive state apparatus. Beginning as a Black Nationalist formation, the party discarded that

ideology by embracing evolutionary nationalism which sought to combine anti-racist and anti-

capitalist perspectives. Huey Newton argued that the U.S. was no longer a nation but an empire

that dominated world politics. He held a sense of solidarity with other colonialized and

marginalized people around the world, and he went on to advance the position of revolutionary

nationalism. He decided that overthrowing the enemy, the bourgeoisie, called for an

international strategy. In the face of U.S. and world oppression (capitalism and imperialism), the

Black Panther Party called for the world’s oppressed people to unite and fight collectively for

revolutionary inter-communalism.

It was in the context of the rapidly shifting political ideas, together with the increasing

repression from the U.S. government that the members of the BPP traveled throughout Europe,

Asia, Latin America and Africa. They went in order to establish relations with international

activists and leaders of socialist nations. In 1968, at the invitation of Japanese radicals, BPP

leaders Kathleen Cleaver and Earl Anthony gave a series of speeches criticizing the war in

Vietnam and the use of Nuclear weapons. In the same year, their minister of information;

Eldridge Cleaver fled to Cuba in order to escape charges related to the April 6, 1968 Panthers

shootout with the Oakland police in Oakland, California. Kathleen followed along with him.

Significantly, the North African nation of Algeria-a nation that sheltered many exiled Panthers-

officially acknowledged the connection between African and African-American liberation

struggles by inviting black artists and political activists to the First Pan-African Cultural

festival which started in July of 1968. In addition to an invited group of radical activists,

writers, scholars, poets, actors, playwrights, and jazz musicians; Panther leader Eldridge

Cleaver reemerged in Algiers. Black Panther Party members met numerous international

revolutionaries, including representatives from liberation movements in Palestine, Vietnam and

South Africa.

Thereafter, Black Panther Party members were to receive numerous invitations from

international revolutionaries and progressive governments. As a result of close ties between

them and the North Korean Embassy in Algiers, North Korean Diplomats invited Cleaver to

attend the International Conference on Revolutionary Journalists in the Democratic People’s

Republic of Korea in 1969. This primary visit led to another invitation by North Korean officials

the following year. A contingent calling itself the American People’s Anti-Imperialist

Delegation and representing a cross-section of progressive organizations and forces- the Black

Panther Party, the Red Guard, the woman’s liberation movement, the radical media, and

representatives of the anti-war movement- met Cleaver in North Korea and toured the country.

Unexpectedly, the Vietnamese ambassador in Pyongyang invited the American delegation of

progressive activists to North Vietnam, where they were honored on August 18th, 1970, during a

celebration of International Day of Solidarity with Black Peoples of the United States.

As a result of an invitation from the Congolese Socialist Youth Movement in 1971, Eldridge

led a delegation of Panthers from Algeria to the People’s Republic of the Congo, members of the

Black Panther’s contingent, which included Kathleen Cleaver, established relations with African

freedom fighters from Ginea-Bissau, Mozambique and Angola. Also participating were socialist

youth delegations from North Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe, and the Soviet Union, all of which

articulated their support for the struggle against Portuguese Colonialism.

As the 1970’s progressed, the Black Panther Party experienced mounting internal

contradictions as well as increased repression by the U.S. government. Severe tensions emerged

between California and New York Panther members, eventually resulting in a public division

which had an effect on the party’s international contingent. This contributed to an increasingly

precarious situation in Algiers for Cleaver, his family and other Black Panther Party members.

Moreover, murders of the New York and California Panthers, ultimately led Huey Newton to

eliminate numerous party members.

In addition to internal problems, the Panthers faced increasing repression from the U.S.

government in the form of the FBI’s Counter Intelligence Program (COINTELPRO) which was

set in motion in the late 1960’s. This state terror campaign decimated Panther leadership and

rank-in-file membership. With the assistance and support of the FBI and local police informants,

urban policemen raided Panther offices and homes in cities across America and deliberately shot

and killed numerous Panthers. Killed while asleep in their apartment on December 4 th, 1969,

Fred Hampton and Mark Clark were two of the most prominent Panthers assassinated by the

Chicago police. As internal contradictions mounted and state repression intensified, the Black

Panther Party declined between 1974 and 1977.

“When you have people who are revolutionaries,” Kathleen Cleaver told Henry Louis Gates

in 1997, “they repudiate the commitment to making money, and say ‘We want justice. We want

change. We want truth. We want freedom.’ Well that’s not going to work if the structure [of

society] is based on financial rewards and financial incentives. So we were at odds with the way

the system worked. We had a different idea. We said ‘Power to the People’”.

Kathleen worked on the Cleaver defense fund through several means, one of which being

making films in order to raise money and awareness. She began a film festival, which became a

popular venue. By 1970, the Black Panther Party was referring to the U.S. as “a barbaric

organization controlled and operated by avaricious, sadistic, bloodthirsty thieves”. (Foner, 268).

There was, as the New York Black Panthers explained it, a governmental conspiracy that sought

to eliminate “all of those who dared to question the inhuman capitalistic system.” Not

surprisingly it was those institutions that the Panthers had interactions with locally that were

most often implicated in these conspiracy theories. Police officers and court officials were

tangible symbols of ‘the most ruthless system in the world’, a system that attempted to cover up

instances of cruelty, inequality, and outright brutality through the propagation of the “big lie” of

United States freedom and equality. Such actions showed that “the American system of justice is

a hideous sham and a revolting farce” (Foner, 203). In the face of such a wide-ranging

conspiracy, the Panthers felt that they had little choice but to topple these institutions wholesale.

From an interview with several people on the issues quoted from News maker 30 years later:

The MacNeil Lehrer News Hour, on August 30, 1993:

Ms. Hunter-Gault: “Kathleen Cleaver, do you think it’s time to pass the torch

to a younger, newer generation?”

Ms. Cleaver: “Well, first of all, I think it’s important to acknowledge that the

younger generation has grown up in a society that is publicly integrated but

privately segregated, whereas the older generation grew up in a society that was

totally segregated, both privately and publicly. Their experiences are very

different. Their needs and their lack of the solidarity and community that was

also part of segregation, and on top of that their need and their ability to take

advantage of other… more opportunities or greater opportunities creates a state of

confusion that our generation did not have to deal with. So whether or not it’s

time to pass the torch, I think the younger generation has since and does want to

take that torch, however they want to study what the older generation did. And I

think there’s a failure on the part of leadership to provide concrete examples and

leadership training and essentially the level of communication that they’re

demanding to become full-fledged leaders.”

As President Lyndon B. Johnson said in a speech at Howard University in 1965, “You do not

take a man who for years has been hobbled by chains, liberate him, bring him to the starting line

of a race, saying ‘You are free to compete with all the others,’ and still justly believe you have

been completely fair.”

While many people involved in the Black Power Movement supported the goals of the Civil

Rights Movement, they were concerned that the non-violent approach of Martin Luther-King and

his followers put them in a position where they had to wait for their rights. The leaders of the

Black Power Movement asserted the need for equal rights today, not tomorrow and they were

willing to pursue that goal, in the words of Malcolm X, ‘by any means necessary’. The Black

Panthers were instrumental in making a tangible connection between the struggle of minority

communities and other working-class communities. This brought attention to the black man as a

fighter; one unwilling to remain stagnant in the face of racism and oppression. The Black Power

Movement was pivotal in reaffirming a sense of racial pride in their community, one that was

both national and transnational. These philosophies and ideologies of the Movement continue to

have an impact on both the cultural and political perspectives of the African American

community.

Although women have persevered through the tragedies and triumphs of the 50’s and 60’s;

introducing a leadership that enhanced the movement, propelling it forward. Kathleen was still

forced to accept the violence as part of the process of integration; while taking a more radical

approach than her predecessors. The influence of the Civil Rights Movement reached far beyond

the African American community, it prompted other groups to consider their status in American

Law and society. Their ideals of freedom and equality clearly resonated with women, gay and

lesbians, Hispanics, elderly citizens, disabled citizens and others. Groups experiencing

discrimination began to actively organize to educate the public regarding the barriers they were

facing and to enact policies to put an end to these acts of discrimination. The year after Kathleen

and Eldridge were divorced in 1987, she received her Law degree from Yale School of Law in

1988, cum laude. She is presently a senior fellow, teaching at Yale University, and also teaches

at the Emory School of Law. Although she was able to reach a standard of living far beyond

where she came from, she remains, to this day very concerned with the Black Power struggle,

both in this country and abroad.

She was cut out to succeed and I believe she had that fire ignited from the time of her

childhood. Her parents, both being in higher education, seem to have instilled in her an ongoing

curiosity, and she channeled her energy into fighting for the black liberation cause. With all the

struggles of her life, she never gave up or relinquished the cause. Her cause followed her right

into the halls of higher education at Yale University. Although her life today is structured

somewhat differently, she is still the same woman with that robust curiosity for the state of being

of her people; which began for her in the 50’s and 60’s. She continues to walk the walk and talk

the talk, and brings with her the power to make people listen to what she has to say.

Works Cited

Edited by Kathleen Cleaver, and George N. Katsiaficas. Liberation, Imagination, and the Black Panther

Party: A New Look at the Panthers and their Legacy. New York: Routledge, 2001. /z-wcorg/. Web.

"Historical Look at the Black Panther Party" National Public Radio (NPR) June 16 2003. Web.

"Historical Look at the Black Panther Party" National Public Radio (NPR) June 16 2003. Web.

"The Nine Lives of Kathleen Cleaver" The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education.14 (1996): p. 31. Web.

News, David Hinckley/ New York Daily."'Power' - Full Doc Eyes Civil - Rights Struggle" Daily News (New

York), sec. TELEVISION: 73. February 9 2012. Web.

"Activists in the New Civil Rights Movement Speak about their Views." National Public

Radio (NPR) February 2 2005. Web.

“Say It Loud: Great Speeches on Civil Rights and African America Identity”

Edited by Catherine Ellis and Stephen Drury Smith, 1960