In 1970, Life magazine asked Gordon parks to report on the Panthers and their leaders, with a focus on Eldridge Cleaver, then the Panther minister of information. After serving a prison term, Cleaver was on parole when authorities ordered him back to prison because of his involvement in a Panther-police incident. He fled the country and moved to Algiers, where Parks met and interviewed him and his wife Kathleen Cleaver.