Trinity University and the City of San Antonio MLK Jr. Commission will welcome educator, author, and human rights activist Kathleen Neal Cleaver as the guest speaker of the 2018 Martin Luther King Jr. Commemorative Lecture. Her presentation will take place at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 11, in Trinity’s Laurie Auditorium. The lecture is free and open to the public; no tickets are required.
Cleaver has spent most of her life participating in the human rights struggle. Since 2000 Cleaver has served as the co-director of the Human Rights Research Fund, part of a network of anti-racist organizations that document violations of the human rights of U.S. citizens who challenge the racist and military policies within the United States. Cleaver is also currently a senior lecturer and research fellow at Emory University School of Law.
From 1967-71 Cleaver was the communications secretary of the Black Panther Party and the first woman member of their central committee. After sharing years of exile with her former husband Eldridge Cleaver in Algeria and France, she returned to the United States in late 1975.
She graduated summa cum laude with a bachelor’s in history from Yale and earned a law degree from the Yale Law School. She joined the faculty of Emory Law School in 1992 and has been a visiting professor at the Cardozo School of Law in New York, at Sarah Lawrence College, and at the University of Texas Law School.
Cleaver has won numerous fellowships to complete her book, Memories of Love and War, which is still in progress, and was among the inaugural recipients of the Alphonse Fletcher Sr. Fellowship from Harvard University. Her writing has appeared in various magazines and newspapers and she has contributed scholarly essays to the books Critical Race Feminism, Critical White Studies, The Promise of Multiculturalism, and The Black Panther Party Reconsidered.
Trinity has honored the memory of King for decades and launched a speaker series in 1994. Nearly 300 students, staff, and faculty are expected to join other residents of San Antonio in the city's 50th annual MLK Jr. March through the East Side on Monday, Jan. 15.
For more information, contact Trinity’s Office of Student Involvement at 210-999-7547.
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