Eldridge Cleaver

Eldridge Cleaver
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Eldridge Cleaver
Eldridge Cleaver in 1968
Date of birth:	August 31, 1935(1935-08-31)
Place of birth:	Wabbaseka, Arkansas
Date of death:	May 1, 1998 (aged 62)
Place of death:	Pomona, California
Major organizations:	Nation of Islam, Black Panther Party, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Republican Party

Eldridge Cleaver (August 31, 1935 – May 1, 1998) was an author, a prominent American civil rights leader, and a key member of the Black Panther Party.

1 Early life and career
2 Return to America
3 Soul on Fire
4 Cleaver in the 1980s
5 Final years
6 Quotes about and from Eldridge Cleaver
7 Musical references
8 References
9 External links

Early life and career

Born in Wabbaseka, Arkansas, Cleaver moved with his family to Phoenix and then to Los Angeles. As a teenager he was first involved in petty crime, and then in 1957 was convicted of assault with intent to murder. While in prison, he wrote a book of essays, published in book form as Soul on Ice (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1968; paperback Dell/Delta, 1968) which was influential in the black power movement. Cleaver was released from prison in 1966, after which he joined the Oakland-based Black Panther Party, serving as Minister of Information (spokesperson).

He was a Presidential candidate in 1968 on the ticket of the Peace and Freedom Party. That very year, he was injured in a confrontation between the Panthers and Oakland police. Charged with attempted murder, he jumped bail to flee to Algeria, where he was joined by Timothy Leary. Cleaver placed Leary under "revolutionary arrest" as a counter-revolutionary, although Leary was later released alive. Cleaver later left Algeria and spent time in Cuba and France.

Return to America

Cleaver returned to the United States in 1975, and subsequently renounced the Black Panthers. Legal wrangling ended in his being sentenced to probation for assault.

Soul on Fire

Playing off of the title of his most famous book, Soul on Ice, Cleaver published Soul on Fire in 1978.^[1] Cleaver revealed several aspects of his exile in Algeria:

Cleaver was supported by regular stipends from the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, which the United States was then bombing.
Cleaver was followed by other former-criminals-turned-revolutionaries, many of whom hijacked planes to get to Algeria. The Algerians expected Cleaver to keep his protégés in line, which he described as increasingly difficult as their increasing numbers stretched his North Vietnamese allowance to the breaking point. Cleaver organized a stolen car ring to employ his revolutionary protégés, stealing cars in Europe to sell in Africa. Around this time Cleaver discovered his wife had a lover. The lover was subsequently murdered by persons unknown.
Cleaver eventually fled Algeria out of fear for his life. He could no longer control his protégés and the Algerian police were cracking down on them. He subsequently lived underground for a time in France.
Cleaver experienced a religious conversion—he became a "born again" Christian—during his year of isolation, while living underground.

Cleaver in the 1980s

In the early 1980s, Cleaver became disillusioned with what he saw as the commercial nature of mainstream evangelical Christianity and flirted with alternatives, including Sun Myung Moon's campus ministry organization CARP, and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, also known as Mormonism. Cleaver was baptized into The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and remained a member until his death in 1998.

Around 1980, Cleaver applied for a job as a technical writer at Apple Computer. His résumé listed a single publication: Soul on Ice, which was notable for unconventional views on politics and race relations, as well as unconventional grammar and word usage.

Around 1980, he also became a fixture at Palo Alto's Peninsula Bible Church, which was the spiritual home of Chuck Colson and many right-wing causes. He also designed and marketed a line of men's clothing, including pants with a codpiece.^[2]

By the 1980s, Cleaver had become a conservative Republican. He appeared at various Republican events and spoke at a California Republican State Central Committee meeting regarding his political transformation. He endorsed Ronald Reagan for President in 1980 and in 1984 embarked on an unsuccessful campaign to win one of California's seats in the United States Senate, failing to win the Republican Party's nomination.

Final years

Later in the 1980s, Cleaver became addicted to crack cocaine. In 1992, he was convicted of cocaine possession and burglary. In 1994, after nearly dying in a cocaine-related assault, he began recovery from his addiction.

Sometime after kicking his addiction in 1994 and before his death in California in 1998, Cleaver lived in Miami and hosted a weekly radio talk show on "AM 14, Florida's Talk Leader" WFTL 1400 AM, a Miami/Ft. Lauderdale talk-radio station. The show was popular.

He became involved in using healthy nutrition to counteract drug addictions.

Cleaver died of prostate cancer in Pomona, California, in 1998, at age 62. He is interred in Mountain View Cemetery, Altadena, California. He is survived by his daughter, Joju Younghi Cleaver, and son, Ahmad Maceo Eldridge Cleaver.

Quotes about and from Eldridge Cleaver

"I thought Eldridge was the reincarnation of Malcolm X. I'd never heard such power, such eloquence."

David Hilliard

"All the gods are dead except for the god of war."

"We are a very sick country — I, perhaps, am sicker than most. But I accept that. I told you in the beginning that I am extremist by nature — so it is only right that I should be extremely sick."

Eldridge Cleaver, Soul on Ice

"Malcolm X had a special meaning for black convicts. A former prisoner himself, he had risen from the lowest depths to great heights. For this reason he was a symbol of hope, a model for thousands of black convicts who found themselves trapped in the vicious PPP cycle; prison-parole-prison.... One thing that judges, policemen, and administrators of prisons seem never to have understood, and for which they certainly do not make any allowances, is that Negro convicts, basically, rather than see themselves as criminals and perpetrators of misdeeds, look upon themselves as prisoners of war, the victims of a vicious, dog-eat-dog system that is so heinous as to cancel out their own malefactions; in the jungle there is no right or wrong."

Eldridge Cleaver Soul on Ice, (p.64).

"After I returned to prison, I took a long look at myself and, for the first time in my life, admitted that I was wrong, that I had gone astray -- astray not so much from the white man's law as from being human, civilized -- for I could not approve the act of rape. Even thought I had some insight into my own motivations, I did not feel justified. I lost my self-respect. My pride as a man dissolved and my whole fragile moral structure seemed to collapse, completely shattered. That is why I started to write. To save myself."

Eldridge Cleaver, "Soul on Ice"

"I became a rapist. To refine my technique and modus operandi, I started out by practicing on black girls in the ghetto-in the black ghetto where dark and vicious deeds appear not as aberrations or deviations from the norm, but as part of the sufficiency of the Evil of a day-and when I considered myself smooth enough, I cross the tracks and sought out white prey. I did this consciously, deliberately, willfully, methodically-though looking back I see that I was in a frantic, wild, and completely abandoned frame of mind

From Eldridge Cleaver's obituary^{citation needed}:

In one essay, Cleaver described his rape of white women as “an insurrectionary act. It delighted me that I was defying and trampling upon the white man’s law … defiling his women.”

”I wanted to send waves of consternation through the white race,” he said.

Musical references

The MC5 recorded a live track titled "I'm Mad Like Eldridge Cleaver" on October 27, 1968, released on their Ice Pick Slim E.P. in 1995.

Larry Norman wrote the song, "Soul On Fire" in 1978 (a political song about the religious claims of an ex-Black Panther). The best version is from the Phydeauz Album; a rough mix is found on the album The Story Of The Tune, by Larry Norman.

Swedish poet Åke Hodell made a text-sound composition named Where is Eldridge Cleaver? in 1969.^[3]

American punk band Dead To Me quotes Cleaver in the liner notes of their 2006 debut album Cuban Ballerina.

American Rapper Ras Kass named his debut album after Cleaver's book Soul on Ice.

Soca artist KMC released an album entitled Soul on Fire in October 2005.

James "J.Y." Young of the white rock band Styx mentions him during the track "Half Penny Two Penny" in the Paradise Theatre album. The song "Half Penny Two Penny" was an attack on the financial problems the US had in the late 1970s. In the song was the lyric; "Yes, Mrs. Cleaver, your son's home to stay" which was referring to Eldridge Cleaver (this was confirmed by James Young on In the Studio with Redbeard.)

"Where Y'All At," by Wynton Marsalis, mentions Eldridge in the second verse.

Loudon Wainwright III mentions him in 'California Prison Blues' (1976) ("Eldridge is back / Back in the Penetentiary / If I was Eldrige I would have stayed in gay Paris - wine women and song!"), from the album T Shirt).

Charlie Daniels mentioned Eldridge in his 1970 song "The Pope and the Dope," postulating "What if Eldridge Cleaver was to devise a plan / For the Black Panther Party of America to be merged with the Ku Klux Klan?".

The American band Rage Against the Machine occasionally quotes Eldridge Cleaver before their signature song "Killing in the Name."

He was also mentioned in Tupac Shakur's song "Ghetto Gospel."citation needed

British band Primal Scream references Cleaver in their song "Kowalski," whispering the name of his book Soul on Ice.