Kathleen Cleavers 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 historys 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 peopleno 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 2. 3. 4. 5.

community.

We want full employment for our people. We want an end to the robbery by the CAPITALIST of our black community. We want decent housing, fit for the shelter of human beings. 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. 7.

We want all black men to be exempt from military service. 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 natures 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 shouldnt 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 Panthers 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 partys 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 Cleavers 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 Eldridges defense, which aided him enough to see him exonerated by 1980. The Black Panther Party was founded on Malcolm Xs point of view; Mao Zedongs motto of picking up the gun, along with Frantz Fantons and Che Gueveras theories of revolutionary violence. The program included elements of power and self-determination within the black community. One of the Panthers 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 Americas

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 anticapitalist 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 worlds 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 Panthersofficially 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 Peoples 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 Peoples Anti-Imperialist

Delegation and representing a cross-section of progressive organizations and forces- the Black Panther Party, the Red Guard, the womans 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 Peoples Republic of the Congo, members of the Black Panthers 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 1970s 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 partys 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 FBIs Counter Intelligence Program (COINTELPRO) which was set in motion in the late 1960s. 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 4th, 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 thats 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 its time to pass the torch to a younger, newer generation? Ms. Cleaver: Well, first of all, I think its 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 its 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 theres a failure on the part of leadership to provide concrete examples and leadership training and essentially the level of communication that theyre 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 50s and 60s; 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 50s and 60s. 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