Kathleen Neal Cleaver, one of the most photographed icons of 1960s activism, is a name and image synonymous with captivatingly militant Black Power. Audiences might be familiar with the height of the Black Panther Party actions and the circulation of Cleaver’s image as well as her essential, powerful words, but what do we know of the complex arc of Kathleen Neal Cleaver’s life? Cleaver grew up in the Black activist intellectual circles of the mid-twentieth century. She became one of the most recognizable leaders of the Black Power movement in the United States and abroad. But equally enthralling and impactful, she has lived, often simultaneously, as educator, legal scholar, speaker, wife, mother, and grandmother. And now she is giving the public a glimpse into the many worlds she has moved through, advocated for, and built for her communities.

The World(s) She Made: Composing the Radical Lives of Kathleen Neal Cleaver is the first public photography exhibit to explore the exceptional life of Kathleen Neal Cleaver. It draws heavily from the personal collection that Ms. Cleaver curated for decades and includes a few images from other collections such as that of Dr. Doris Derby. This photography show chronicles Cleaver’s personal journey from the child of a U.S. Foreign Service officer living across the U.S. South, Asia, and West Africa to a leader in the Black Panther Party and the international Black Power movement; and as she went from living “inside exile” (accompanying her fugitive husband to Algeria and France while she herself still possessed relative freedom of movement) to Yale University as a student, all while raising two children, becoming a law professor at Yale and Emory Universities, and building a career in human rights.

The World(s) She Made is co-curated by a team of artists-scholars-activists handpicked by Ms. Cleaver and in agreement with the Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library at Emory University in Atlanta. The co-curators (Stephanie Alvarado, Lia T. Bascomb, Sierra King, Leigh Raiford, Delphine Sims, and John Stephens) worked with Ms. Cleaver to organize her collection before the late Pellom McDaniels III, then curator of African American collections, acquired the Kathleen Cleaver Papers for the Rose Library at Emory University. The collection is open to the public for those who want to delve further into the stories behind the photographs in the exhibit.