Sunday, November 22, 1998; 3:07 p.m. EST

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- Thirty years ago, defiant young black men and women raised their fists and spirits to unite against racism. They took a name and a cause -- the Black Panther Party.

Some escaped those tumultuous times and had careers in education and politics. Others were jailed, exiled or died, including Kwame Ture, the former Stokely Carmichael who was buried Sunday. Here is a brief look at where some of the more notable people associated with the Black Panthers are now:

-- Huey Newton. A cofounder of the Black Panther Party in October 1966, he was charged with the murder of an Oakland policeman after a gun battle a year later. He was convicted of manslaughter, but the conviction was set aside and he was freed in 1970. In 1974, Newton went into selfimposed exile in Cuba. He later abused drugs and alcohol and was shot to death in a drug-plagued area of west Oakland in 1989.

-- Eldridge Cleaver. The party's minister of information, he went to prison for assault and wrote ``Soul on Ice,'' a series of powerful essays decrying prejudice and racism. Published in 1968, it became required reading for the Black Power movement. Cleaver ran unsuccessfully for president in 1968 on the Peace and Freedom ticket, and later denounced his past and joined the Republican Party. He worked as a diversity consultant at the University of LaVerne near Los Angeles, and died in May at age 62.

-- Bobby Seale. Chairman of the party and Newton's second-in-command, Seale went on to do community work in Philadelphia. He is active on the lecture circuit. Recently finished a soul-food cookbook, ``Barbeque'n with Bobby Seale.''

-- David Hilliard. Chief of staff of the Panthers, he became a union representative for Oakland health care workers and helped create the Huey P. Newton Foundation in Oakland. Hilliard now teaches the history of the Black Panthers at the New College in San Francisco, conducts a Black Panther bus tour in Oakland. Hilliard plans to run for an Oakland city council seat in 2000.

-- Elaine Brown. She joined the Party in April 1968 and led the party through the 70s after Newton left for Cuba. Now the vice president of the Newton Foundation, she published her autobiography, ``A Taste of Power: A Black Woman's Story,'' in 1992. She now divides her time between France and the San Francisco Bay area, does community work in Atlanta and is finishing a book about black youths and the legal system.

-- Kathleen Cleaver. Cleaver's ex-wife had been the panthers' communications secretary. Now a visiting law professor at the Cardozo School of Law in New York, she worked on Geronimo Pratt's murder case as part of his legal team.

-- Bobby Rush. A member of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee from 1966 to 1968 and a co-founder of the Illinois Black Panther Party in 1968, he operated the party's Free Breakfast for Children program. This month, he was re-elected to Congress in Illinois' 1st Congressional District and has expressed interest in running for mayor of Chicago.

-- Elmer ``Geronimo'' Pratt. A decorated Vietnam veteran now known as Geronimo ji Jaga, he was convicted in 1972 and sentenced to 25 years to life in prison for the 1968 murder of a schoolteacher in Santa Monica. He maintained he was in Oakland attending Black Panther meetings at the time. Pratt was finally freed in June 1997 after a court found he did not get a fair trial. He is suing the Los Angeles Police Department and several former officers for malicious prosecution and evidence tampering.

-- Angela Davis was not a member of the Black Panthers, but did work in concert with them on community programs. A former member of the Communist Party, she was charged in 1971 with plotting a bloody courthouse shootout during the trial of three black prisoners accused of killing a prison guard. The allegations landed her on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted list. She was acquitted and now lives in the Oakland hills. Since 1991, she has taught in the UC Santa Cruz History of Consciousness Department.

-- Joanne Chesimard. New Jersey's most wanted fugitive, was a leading figure in the Black Panther movement and later joined the Black Liberation Army. Convicted in 1977 of killing a state trooper in a shootout on the New Jersey Turnpike, she broke out of her maximum security cell and wound up in Cuba, where Fidel Castro granted her political asylum. She now goes by the name Assata Shakur.

-- Afeni Shakur. One of the infamous New York 21, a group of Black Panther Party members arrested on conspiracy charges. She now runs a record company named after her late son, rap artist Tupac Shakur.