Kathleen Neal Cleaver

Kathleen Cleaver
Cleaver speaking at Free U.S. Political Prisoners Spring Break Jericho March Rally on 27 March 1998
Born	Kathleen Neal (1945-05-13) May 13, 1945 (age 71) Memphis, Texas

Kathleen Neal Cleaver (born May 13, 1945) is an American professor of law, known for her involvement with the Black Panther Party.

Kathleen Cleaver, née Kathleen Neal was born in Memphis, Texas. Her parents were both college graduates. Her father was a sociology professor at Wiley College in Marshall, Texas, and her mother earned a master's degree in mathematics. Soon after Cleaver was born, her father, Ernest Neal, accepted a job as the director of the Rural Life Council of Tuskegee Institute in Alabama. Six years later, Ernest joined the Foreign Service. The family moved abroad and lived in such countries as India, Liberia, Sierra Leone, and the Philippines. Cleaver returned to the United States to attend a Quaker boarding school near Philadelphia, George School. She graduated with honors in 1963. She continued her education at Oberlin College, and later transferred to Barnard College. In 1966, she left college for a secretarial job with the New York office of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC).

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. She moved to San Francisco in November 1967 to join the Black Panther Party. Kathleen Neal and Eldridge Cleaver were married on December 27, 1967. Cleaver became the communications secretary and the first female member of the Party’s decision-making body. She also served as the spokesperson and press secretary. 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 that were prominent in the Black Panther Party, which included Elaine Brown and Ericka Huggins.