Eldridge Cleaver

Eldridge Cleaver in 1968

Leroy Eldridge Cleaver (August 31, 1935 – May 1, 1998) was a prominent leader and early member of the militant Black Panther Party. After a long, tumultuous journey through a youth spent mostly in and out of prison to several years as a fugitive on the run he was transformed from an angry, black "revolutionary," bent on revenge against American racism, to a born-again Christian author, and American civil rights activist.

Early Life

Born the only child of Leroy and Thelma Cleaver in Wabbaseka, Arkansas, Cleaver's family moved frequently, at last settling in the Watts district of Los Angeles, California. At one point his father worked as a nightclub piano player and later as a waiter on the railroad line running between Chicago and Los Angeles. His mother worked as a school teacher. Eldridge Cleaver would later describe his childhood as an unhappy one dominated by an abusive father who would often physically assault Thelma Cleaver. Leroy and Thelma Cleaver separated shortly after the family arrived in California.

As a teenager, Eldridge spent much of his time in correctional institutions. He was arrested for the first time at the age of 12 for stealing a bicycle and sentenced to a reform school for youthful offenders. Cleaver spent most of the ensuing 15 years in prison on a variety of charges relating to drugs or violence. The most serious of these offenses occurred in late 1956 when he was arrested and sentenced to 2 to 14 years in prison for a series of aggravated sexual assaults and assault with intent to murder.

Prison

While incarcerated in Folsom State Prison in northern California, Cleaver underwent a profound transformation. "After I returned to prison," he would write, "I took a long look at myself and for the first time in my life admitted that I was wrong, and that I had gone astray — astray not so much from the white man's law as from being human, civilized. . . . My pride as a man dissolved and my whole fragile structure seemed to collapse, completely shattered. That is why I started to write. To save myself." Influenced by the writings of Malcolm X, Cleaver became a follower of the Nation of Islam. However, California prison authorities did not recognize the Nation of Islam as a legitimate religious organization and his efforts to proselytize other prisoners was often punished with long periods in solitary confinement. After Malcolm X broke with the Nation of Islam, Cleaver also broke with the organization, yet remained a follower of Malcolm X's philosophy of black pride and vigorous activism. In prison, Cleaver immersed himself in the writings of various revolutionaries and social critics, including W.E.B. Du Bois, Richard Wright, James Baldwin, Thomas Paine, Voltaire, Karl Marx and V. I. Lenin. From such varied sources, Cleaver began to piece together what he would describe as a "concept of what it meant to be black in white America."

In 1962, while still incarcerated, Cleaver published his first essays on Black nationalism in the Negro History Bulletin. In 1966, through the help of certain prominent lawyers and writers, several of his essays were published in the San Francisco–based radical journal Ramparts. These early essays served as the basis for his autobiographical Soul on Ice (1968), which became very influential within the then burgeoning black power movement.

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On the cover of his 1968 book, Soul On Ice

Black Panthers

Soon after Cleaver was released from Folsom State Prison in 1966, he joined with Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale, who had just formed the Black Panther Party (BPP) in October.

Drawing upon Soul on Ice as political manifesto, Cleaver, as the party's minister of information played a major role in the popularization and radicalization of the BPP. Formed at a time of great social upheaval in the United States, amid the tensions of the ongoing war in Vietnam and between supporters and opponents of the civil rights movement; the BPP emerged as a beacon of political radicalism. Cleaver himself openly called for a revolutionary insurrection against "the predominantly white and wealthy establishment" within the United States.

In the spring of 1967 at a black student conference organized by the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) at Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee, Eldridge Cleaver met Kathleen Neal, the secretary of the Committee's Campus Program and the daughter of a Foreign Service officer. The BPP Minister's fiery rhetoric and the Panther's more radical approach to issues of race and class appealed to her. The pair married a few months later on December 27, 1967, over the objections of Neal's parents.

In 1968, serving as its Minister of Information and shortly after the publication of his book, Cleaver became a candidate for President on the ticket of the Peace and Freedom Party. That same year, on April 6, 1968, two days after the assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., Cleaver participated in a shootout with Oakland police in which 17-year-old Black Panther Bobby Hutton was killed and two police officers were wounded. Cleaver himself was injured, arrested and charged with attempted murder.

Exile

File:Cleaver-Wanted.gif

Cleaver's wanted poster

To avoid being sent back to prison for his part in the Oakland shootout, Cleaver jumped his $50,000 bail, fled to Mexico City (1968) and then to Cuba, where he remained for 7 months. It would be there while in Cuba one night that he later wrote of looking up at the moon, seeing the faces of his heroes Marx, Mao Tse-Tung, Castro and others appearing, and then fading away.

He recalled the sermons of his Baptist minister grandfather and got down on his knees and prayed. As he then looked up at the moon he saw only the face of Jesus Christ. Cleaver would spend the next seven years wandering throughout the communist world, with sojourns in Algeria, North Korea, China, and the Soviet Union before finally settling in France. Pregnant with their first child, Kathleen Cleaver would join her husband in Algeria in July of 1969, where she soon gave birth to their first child, Maceo, named after the Cuban general Antonio Maceo. The Cleavers' second child, daughter Jojuyounghi (Joju), would be born in North Korea in 1970. In Algeria, too, Cleaver would be joined by LSD guru Timothy Leary and Leary's third wife, Rosemary, who in conjunction with the radical Weathermen group, had arranged for Leary's escape from prison. Together, they were granted political asylum and given a villa in Algiers by the government intended as a haven for black American exiles as well as a base for recruitment of U.S. military deserters. In Algiers, the newly founded international wing of the Black Panther Party was formed with the Cleavers at the center. An incessant long-distance feud between Eldridge Cleaver and Huey Newton resulted in 1971 with the Cleavers' international branch's expulsion from the Party. Following the split, the Cleavers and their allies formed a new organization, the short-lived, Revolutionary People's Communication Network.

In his later (1978) book Soul on Fire, Cleaver mused that he believed for a while that he thought, at last, that Christianity was The Answer. He would also reveal that he was supported by regular stipends from the Republic of North Vietnam, with which the USA was then at war and that in his trek into exile he had been followed by other former-criminals-turned-revolutionaries, many of whom had hijacked planes to get to Algeria. The Algerians expected Cleaver to keep his proteges in line, but it became increasingly difficult, as their growing number stretched his North Vietnamese stipend to the breaking point. Cleaver organized a stolen car ring as a solution to this dilemma. His revolutionary proteges would steal cars in Europe, and then sell them in Africa. Eventually, due to such criminal activity, Cleaver would have to flee Algeria out of fear for his life.

Finally, Cleaver abandoned his proteges and began to sour on his Marxist paradise dreams, resettling in Paris in 1973 with his family. It was there during his months of isolation with his family, that Eldridge Cleaver began setting in motion the process that would enable his repatriation to the United States.

Return to America

In 1975 the Cleavers returned to America, where Eldridge turned himself in to authorities pleading guilty to assault after prosecutors dropped attempted murder charges against him in the 1968 police shootout. He was placed on probation and directed to perform 2,000 hours of community service. Subsequently he also renounced the Black Panthers. The next few years were spent in California. During this period, Eldridge underwent a political transformation that saw him become increasingly conservative and interested in religion. In 1981 Kathleen moved, along with both children, across country to go back to college. She enrolled at Yale, graduating with honors in 1983 with a bachelor's degree in history. The Cleavers divorced in 1985.

After public appearances with several evangelicals, including Pat Robertson and Robert Schuller, Eldridge became disillusioned with what he viewed as the commercial nature of evangelical Christianity. Around the same time, he also made a few appearances with Rev. Sun Myung Moon's campus ministry organization CARP. In 1983 or 1984, Cleaver was baptized into The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (The Mormons) remaining, at least, a nominal member until his death.

He described his spiritual quest as "a search to try to find out what was the truth. That led me to checking out all different kinds of religions. Because I knew that there must be some truth out there somewhere. But I found out that every time I went and checked out a religion or a sect or a denomination or a cult, people started calling me by names. I thought I’d better go check out the Mormons, so I went and studied their material, their doctrine. And People started calling me a Mormon... And then I went and checked out the Moonies to see what Rev. Moon was talking about. But I tell you, I was very reluctant, because after following Mao Tse Tung, and Ho Chi Ming, and Kim il Sung, I wasn’t ready for another great wise man from the East. And I said ‘Hey, I’m not a Moonie, I’m not a Mormon, I just got to the M’s!’ You know, it’s a logical progression, it’s a metamorphosis. And what I found was that my heart was growing, I became more and more inclusive to be able to relate to more and more people on this planet."

Politically, Cleaver became active in conservative Republican politics, endorsing Ronald Reagan for President in 1980. In 1986 he embarked on a GOP campaign to win one of California's seats in the United States Senate. (He failed to win his party's nomination, however.) His political turnabout was such that he once demanded that the Berkeley City Council begin its meetings with the Pledge of Allegiance, a practice they had abandoned years before. The incident ended with the mayor telling the former BPP minister to "Shut up or we'll have you removed."

Also in the 1980's, it was revealed that Cleaver had become addicted to crack cocaine. In 1992 he was convicted of cocaine possession and burglary. In 1994, he underwent emergency brain surgery after reportedly being being knocked unconscious during a cocaine buy. After that experience, Cleaver promised to stay clean.

Death

On May 1, 1998 at the age of 62, Eldridge Cleaver died of prostate cancer in Pomona, California. He is interred at the Mountain View Cemetery, Altadena, California and is survived by his daughter, Joju Younghi Cleaver, and son Macio Cleaver. He also had a son, Riley, from another relationship.

Legacy

Eldridge Cleaver's life more than anything else, perhaps, exemplifies the concept of transformation through knowledge or education. His life coincided with a uniquely tumultuous time in American history, particularly, in relation to the issue of race relations and the politics of the Left. A common view on the Left into the 1960's was that the United States of America was inherently evil, imperialist and racist and could only be righted by social revolution. Some prominent intellectuals who had been on the Left, Daniel Bell, Irving Kristol, Nathan Glazer, Norman Podhoretz and some others from poor immigrant families ultimately also disliked this view and deserted the Left. As former Panther Roland Freeman, said upon his death, "Eldridge played a very critical role in the struggle of the '60's and the '70's. He was a symbol." Noteworthy today as well is his son, Ahmad Maceo Eldridge Cleaver, who has embraced Islam and published his first book, entitled, "Soul on Islam" in April of 2006.

Quotes

• "I can understand J. Edgar Hoover, because he wasn't inaccurate. We were the most militant black organization, and we were serious in what we were going about. He said that we were the main threat. We were trying to be the main threat. We were trying to be the vanguard organization. J. Edgar Hoover was an adversary, but he had good information. We were plugged into all of the revolutionary groups in America, plus those abroad. We were working hand-in-hand with communist parties here and around the world, and he knew that. So from his position, he had to try to stop us."

• "I feel that I am a citizen of the American dream and that the revolutionary struggle of which I am a part is a struggle against the American nightmare."

• "I have taken an oath in my heart to oppose communism until the day I die."

• "If a man like Malcolm X could change and repudiate racism, if I myself and other former Muslims can change, if young whites can change, then there is hope for America."

• "In prison, those things withheld from and denied to the prisoner become precisely what he wants most of all."

• "Respect commands itself and can neither be given nor withheld when it is due."

• "The price of hating other human beings is loving oneself less."

• "You don't have to teach people how to be human. You have to teach them how to stop being inhuman."

References

ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

• Cleaver, Eldridge. Soul on Ice. Delta (January 12, 1999). ISBN 978-0385333795

• ______________. "Soul on Fire." Hodder & Stoughton General Division (March 1, 1979). ISBN 978-0340228647

• ______________. Target Zero: A Life in Writing. Palgrave Macmillan (January 9, 2007). ISBN 978-1403976574

• Oliver, John A. Eldridge Cleaver Reborn. Logos International (1977). ISBN 978-0882702339

External links

• CNN Obituary
• PBS Frontline Interview with Eldridge Cleaver
• Reason Magazine Interview with Eldridge Cleaver
• Undercover Black Man (Blog) 1982 Interview with Eldridge Cleaver, Part 1
• Undercover Black Man (Blog) 1982 Interview with Eldridge Cleaver, Part 2
• Undercover Black Man (Blog) 1982 Interview with Eldridge Cleaver, Part 3
• Panther based on the novel by Melvin Van Peebles
• One Journey Home: Eldridge Cleaver's Spiritual Path by Linda Neale, EarthLight Magazine #50, Spring 2004

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