Elaine Brown (b. 1943)
Elaine Brown was born in 1943 in the North Philadelphia inner-city. After attending Temple University for a time, she moved to Los Angeles to pursue a songwriting career, which led her to meet Jay Robert Kennedy who taught her the radical side of the civil rights movement. She became involved in the Black Liberation Movement, joining the Black Panther Party in 1968 in Oakland after Martin Luther King's association. She was instrumental in the Free Breakfast for Children Campaign. Brown became the leader of the party when Huey P. Newton was exiled to Cuba in 1974; she remained the leader until 1977 upon Newton's return. During Brown's leadership she founded the Panther Liberation School. She later left the party, citing sexism when Newton ordered the beating of Regina Davis, an administrator of the Panther Liberator School. Brown moved back to Los Angeles to raise her daughter, where she wrote her memoir about her time with the Black Panthers, A Taste of Power in 1992. Today, Brown focuses on combatting the prosecution of children as adults in Georgia and continues to tour and lecture today.
Angela Davis (b.1944) Arguably one of the most famous black women in history, Angela Davis was an associate of the Black Panther Party. Born in Birmingham, Alabama, Angela Davis studied at Brandeis University before moving to California to teach at UCLA, where she was fired in 1970 for having association with the Black Panther Party and for "inflammatory" language. In 1970, she was named wanted by the FBI due to her alleged involvement in the Marin County Courthouse incident, in which a 17-year-old black male, Jonathan P. Jackson, took a judge and two jurors hostage to free her lover, fellow Black Panther member George Jackson. Wanted from August to October 1970, Davis appealed her jail time by declaring her innocence, and a trial was granted for her after public support. After being released in 1972, Davis travelled to Cuba and Russia and remained active in the Communist Party USA. After splitting from them in 1991, she founded the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism. Today, Davis is an abolitionist of the prison-industrial complex and tours the country, giving lectures. She recently gave a lecture at UMass Amherst. Assata Shakur (b. 1947) "A 20th century escaped slave", as Assata Shakur describes herself,was born JoAnne Deborah Byron. After changing her name to Assata Olugbala Shakur she became involved with the Black Panther Party at 23 when she graduated from the City College of New York, coordinating the free breakfast program in Harlem and becoming one of the leaders there. She left the Black Panthers, citing sexism, and later joined the Black Liberation Army (BLA). In 1973, Shakur was involved in a shootout on the New Jersey Turnpike that left a state trooper dead. She was sentenced to prison in 1977 before escaping in 1979 and fled to Cuba in 1984. In 2013, Shakur was added to the FBI's Most Wanted Terrorist List with a reward of $2 million if found. This has prompted a #HandsOffAssata movement on Twitter. Kathleen Cleaver (b. 1945) Kathleen Cleaver was born in Memphis, Texas. After entering Barnard College in 1966, she joined the SNCC before moving to San Francisco in 1967 to join the Black Panther Party. She quickly became the communications secretary and the spokesperson of the Party. However, due to her husband's, Eldridge, fleeing to Cuba after being accused of attempted murder prompted her relocation to Algeria, North Korea, and France from 1969-1975. Upon her return, she returned to school, studying at Yale, receiving her BA in History and her law degree. Following that, she worked at a law firm in New York before going to Yale as a senior lecturer for African-American studies. Currently, she is a senior lecturer at the Emory University School of Law. |
Putting her singing and songwriting skills to use, Elaine Brown wrote and recorded the anthem to the Black Panther Party in 1973.
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