Connie Matthews - International Coordinator of the Black Panther Party

In 1968, an articulate young Jamaican woman named Connie Matthews, who was employed to UNESCO in Copenhagen, Denmark, helped to sponsor Bobby Seals visit to Scandinavia. Afterwards, she became active in the Danish Committee for Solidarity with the Black Panther Party. Energetic and dedicated to the Black liberation movement, Connie Matthews became the International Coordinator of the Black Panther Party in 1969. She spent several months visiting the Black Panther Headquarters in the United States, coordinating activities between the European solidarity committees and the Black Panther Party, writing for the Panther newspaper, and speaking at conferences. She briefly joined the Black Panther delegation to the Pan African Cultural Festival, and the following November Matthews returned to Algiers to collaborate with Cleaver on the international activities of the Black Panther Party in Europe.

Taken, in part from, The Black Panther Party Reconsidered, by Charles Earl Jones.

Information on Connie Matthews is very scarce. If anyone has any additional information on her, please email us with it at BonitaJamaica@gmail.com.

Feedback from someone who met Connie Matthews

This email was sent to us on May 30, 2008

At the internet I looked for Connie Matthews, and since you are asking for further information about her I can tell as follows - it is not very much, I am sorry to say!

I am a danish woman, 75 years old, who 1970 divorced my husband to marry a highly idealistic medical doctor who became the love of my life & vice versa. He suddenly died at the age of 56 after 6 years of happy marriage.

We were living in a large house north of Copenhagen, and on March 1970 Kathleen Cleaver came from Algiers with her infant baby to recover from intense stress & fatigue. At this time I had never heard about The Black Panther Party and Eldridge Cleaver. She stayed in the house until March 10th 1970, and on her departure she signed my husband´s danish translation of Soul on Ice with these words: For the good doctor & revolutionary, Dr. Erik Jørgensen, who has done us a wonderful favour. Many thanks Kathleen Cleaver.

I saw Kathleen only once (before I moved in) but I have never talked with her, I was bashfull and insecure. She seemed quite remote, and I did not know what to say to her.

Not long after her departure arrived Connie Matthews. She was very beautifull and kind, I never forgot her. She and my husband spent hours talking together, discussing political things I did not have any assumptions at all to understand.

Connie had a boyfriend (vaguely I remember that his name was Jan) he was a very nice, danish man, taking good care of her, loving her at nights, if I may say so)

But generally the start of my living in Vedbæk, Denmark, was quite stressful. The telephone rang all the time (from Algiers I guess) mostly by night, and Connie herself telephoned a lot long distance, probably to Black Panther Party members.

In the mornings when my husband had gone to the Copenhagen hospital (he was a chief doctor) Connie came into the dining room to have breakfast and coffee with me, she was such a tender and warmhearted woman! By the way - I did not know she was a Jamaican, in fact I did at that time not know anything at all, except being a housewife!

Now for many years I have been an author, right now I am writing memoirs of my life with "the revolutionary doctor" 1969-1976. I have made a lot of research, and doing so I read about Eldridge Cleaver, and to-day I know all the things I did not show any interest in when I was in my thirties. I think he was a really fantastic person!!

During research I was awfully sad internetwise to learn about the death of Connie Matthews in Jamaica as a victim of cointelpro.

Sorry I did not contribute with very much concerning Connie. Take care of yourself, whoever you are reading this mail.

Kindly regards

Inge Krog Holt

Gilleleje

Denmark

Bonita Jamaica
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