Chaka Khan is a super cool woman but did you know she was also a black panther! Woahh! How awesome is that?

While still at highschool she received her name Chaka during an African naming cermony. She was born Yvette Marie Stevens and became Chaka Adunne Aduffe Yemoja Hodarhi Karifi.

The name “Khan” came after her marriage to Hassan Khan in 1970.

However at just 16 she was drafted by the Black Panthers, mostly for light duty, she says. She was serving free breakfasts as part of a kids program, often missing her first class.

In 2007 CBS reported:

But she was coming of age in the turbulent 1960s, an adolescent determined to make it on her own.

“She was very, very independent and very headstrong,” her mother said. “And she didn’t want to take any orders from anybody anymore, you know? And so she ran away from home, several times.”

She ran away for good at 16, and joined the Black Panther party.

“They mostly had me, ’cause I was a young chick. I was in high school, so they didn’t really bestow really heavy duty stuff on me. I could sell papers. I started a free breakfast for children program. I did that every morning, before I went to school. I usually missed my first class because of it!”

Really interesting stuff!

Read more here: http://www.cbsnews.com/news/the-incomparable-chaka-khan/