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 as a youth in prison to several years as a fugitive on the run he was transformed from an angry, young 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 to Phoenix and then to Los Angeles. After his father began working as a waiter on a railroad line running between Chicago and Los Angeles, Cleaver's family moved frequently before settling in the poor Watts district of Los Angeles, California. Eldridge Cleaver would later depict his childhood as an unhappy one dominated by an abusive father who would often physically assault his wife. 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 burgeoning black power movement.

File:Soulonicetn.jpg

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 founded 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, amidst 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 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, 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 was injured, arrested and charged with attempted murder.

Marriage

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. Apparently, 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.

Exile

To avoid being sent back to prison for his part in the Oakland shootout, Cleaver jumped bail and left the country, taking refuge in Cuba for 7 months. He spent 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; taking up residence in Algiers with Cleaver and several other exiles. In Algiers, the base of 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 would reveal that he was supported by regular stipends from the Republic of North Vietnam, with which the USA was then at war. It was also revealed 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 experienced a mystical Christian rebirth (reportedly seeing the figure of Jesus Christ on the face of the moon) while 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 the commercial nature of evangelical Christianity. Following a few appearances with Sun Myung Moon's campus ministry organization CARP, Cleaver made his choice and was baptized into The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (The Mormons) remaining a member until his death.

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.)

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 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. As former Panther Roland Freeman, said upon his death, "Eldridge played a very critical role in the struggle of the '60s and the '70s. He was a symbol." Son, Ahmad Maceo Eldridge Cleaver, 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

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