Leroy Eldridge Cleaver (August 31, 1935 – May 1, 1998) was an African American writer and political activist. He was an early leader of the Black Panther Party, serving as Minister of Information and, while in exile, head of the International Section of the Panthers. As editor of the official Panthers' newspaper, The Black Panther, Cleaver's influence on the direction of the party was rivaled only by founders Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale.
In 1958, Cleaver was convicted of a series of crimes including assault and attempted murder, and he eventually served time in Folsom and San Quentin prisons before being released on parole in 1966. Cleaver read widely in prison and began writing. His work was noticed by Edward Keating of Ramparts, who advocated for his release and published his prison essays. Upon Cleaver's release in 1966, Keating hired him to work for Ramparts and he began his work with the Panthers. In 1968, Cleaver published Soul on Ice, a collection of essays that was met with both praise and condemnation due to its searing commentary on American society and its provocative assertions. Most notoriously, Cleaver admits (with regret) to raping multiple women prior to his incarceration. That same year, he became a fugitive after wounding two Oakland police officers in an ambush, during which Cleaver was wounded and fellow Black Panther Bobby Hutton was killed. Cleaver and Newton subsequently fell out with each other, resulting in a split that weakened the party.
After spending seven years in exile in Cuba, Algeria, and France, Cleaver returned to the U.S. in 1975. He designed provocative clothes for men and later became involved in various religious groups (the Unification Church and the Collegiate Association for the Research of Principles) before joining the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and becoming a conservative Republican.
Biography Early life Eldridge Cleaver was born on August 31, 1935, in Wabbaseka, Arkansas. As a child he moved with his large family to Phoenix and then to Los Angeles. He was the son of Leroy Cleaver and Thelma Hattie Robinson.Cleaver, Eldridge Cleaver; edited by Kathleen Cleaver (2006). Target Zero: A Life in Writing. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. . He had four siblings: Wilhelima Marie, Helen Grace, James Weldon, and Theophilus Henry. Both of his grandfathers were Protestant preachers.
As a teenager, he was involved in petty crime and served time in youth detention centers. At the age of 18, he was convicted of a felony drug charge for marijuana and sent to the adult prison at Soledad. In 1958, he was convicted of assault and assault with intent to murder, and was incarcerated in Folsom and San Quentin prisons, where he became radicalized. He received a copy of The Communist Manifesto and read widely in economics, philosophy, literature and political theory. He joined the Nation of Islam (NOI) and led a radical faction of San Quentin's Black Muslims. Cleaver grew dissatisfied with the NOI and left it at roughly the same time that Malcolm X had his publicized rift with Elijah Muhammad and formed the Organization of Afro-American Unity (OAAU).
Cleaver was paroled from San Quentin on December 12, 1966, with a discharge date of March 20, 1971. His parole was granted with the help of Edward Michael Keating, founder of Ramparts magazine, who had started publishing Cleaver's prison essays in June 1966 and guaranteed him a job in the magazine's San Francisco office.
Black Panther Party Upon his release, Cleaver continued writing for Ramparts and was also involved in efforts to revitalize the OAAU. The Black Panther Party (BPP) was then only two months old. Cleaver joined the Oakland-based BPP, serving as Minister of Information, or spokesperson. What initially attracted him to the Panthers, as opposed to other radical groups, was the BPP's commitment to armed struggle.
In 1967, he, along with Marvin X, Ed Bullins, and Ethna Wyatt, formed the Black House political/cultural center in San Francisco. Amiri Baraka, Sonia Sanchez, Askia Toure, Sarah Webster Fabio, Art Ensemble of Chicago, Avotcja, Reginald Lockett, Emory Douglas, Samuel Napier, Bobby Hutton, Huey Newton, and Bobby Seale were Black House regulars. In 1967, he married Kathleen Neal Cleaver. They had two children, Ahmad Maceo Eldridge, born 1969; and a daughter, Joju Younghi, born July 31, 1970.
In 1968, Cleaver was arrested on violation of parole by association with individual(s) of bad reputation, and control and possession of firearms.Court of Appeal, First District, Division 1, California. IN RE: Leroy Eldridge CLEAVER on Habeas Corpus. PEOPLE of the State of California, Plaintiff and Appellant, v. Leroy Eldridge CLEAVER, Defendant and Respondent. He petitioned for habeas corpus to the Solano County Court, and was granted it along with a release of a $50,000 bail.
Cleaver was a presidential candidate in 1968 on the ticket of the Peace and Freedom Party,Warren, Jenifer; "Former Black Panther Eldridge Cleaver Dies at 62", The Los Angeles Times, May 2, 1998. beating out Dick Gregory for the nomination at the party's national nominating convention. Having been born on August 31, 1935, he would not have been the requisite 35 years of age until more than a year after Inauguration Day 1969. Although the Constitution requires the president to be at least 35 years of age, it does not specify whether the age must be reached at the time of nomination, election, or inauguration. Courts in Hawaii and New York held that Cleaver could be excluded from the ballot because he did not meet the Constitutional criteria.Jones v. Gill (1968) 50 Haw. 618, 446 P.2d 558; Garst v. Lomenzo (N.Y. County Supm. Ct. 1968) 57 Misc.2d 1040, 294 N.Y.S.2d 33, aff'd (1968) 22 N.Y.2d 956, 242 N.E.2d 482, 295 N.Y.S.2d 330.
In the aftermath of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. on April 4, 1968, there were riots across the nation. On April 6, Cleaver and 14 other Panthers were involved in an ambush with Oakland police officers, during which two of the officers were wounded as Cleaver and the other Panthers opened fire. They were armed with M16 rifles and shotguns. Cleaver was wounded during the ambush and 17-year-old Panther Bobby Hutton was killed.Gates, Henry Louis, Jr.; "Interview with Eldridge Cleaver", Frontline, PBS, Spring 1997.Kate Coleman, , New West, May 19, 1980. Charged with attempted murder after the incident, Cleaver jumped bail to flee to Cuba in late 1968. Initially treated with hospitality by the Cuban government, this ended with reports that Fidel Castro had received information of the CIA infiltrating the Black Panther Party. Cleaver then decided to head to Algeria, sending word to his wife to meet him there."Leroy Eldridge Cleaver". Retrieved February 20, 2014. Elaine Klein normalized his immigration status by getting him an invitation to attend the Pan-African Cultural festival, rendering him temporarily safe from prosecution.
The festival allowed him to network with revolutionaries from all over Africa in order to discuss the perils of white supremacy and colonialism. Cleaver was outspoken in his call for violence against the United States, contributing to his mission to "position the Panthers within the revolutionary nationalist camp inside the United States and as disciples of Fanon on the world stage".Malloy, Sean L. (2017). Out of Oakland. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. . Cleaver had set up an international office for the Black Panthers in Algeria. Following Timothy Leary's Weather Underground-assisted prison escape, Leary stayed with Cleaver in Algiers; however, Cleaver placed Leary under "revolutionary arrest" as a counter-revolutionary for promoting drug use.
In 1969, Cleaver cultivated an alliance with the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), better known as North Korea, and BPP publications began reprinting excerpts from Kim Il Sung's writings. Although leftists of the time often looked to Cuba, China, and North Vietnam for inspiration, few had paid any attention to the secretive Pyongyang regime. Bypassing U.S. travel restrictions on North Korea, Cleaver and other BPP members made two visits to North Korea in 1969–1970 with the idea that the juche model could be adapted to the revolutionary liberation of African-Americans. Taken on an official tour of the country, Cleaver expressed admiration at "the DPRK's stable, crime-free society which provided guaranteed food, employment, and housing for all, and which had no economic or social inequalities". Following Cleaver's expulsion from the Black Panthers in 1972, the group's ties with North Korea were quickly forgotten.
In the summer of 1970, Cleaver traveled to China as part a U.S. People's Anti-Imperialist Delegation along with another prominent party member, Elaine Brown.
Byron Vaughn Booth, former Panther Deputy Minister of Defense, claimed that, after a trip to North Korea, Cleaver discovered that his wife had been having an affair with Clinton Robert Smith Jr., a fellow Black Panther. Booth told the FBI that he witnessed Cleaver shoot and kill Smith with an AK-47 in Algeria. Elaine Mokhtefi, in the London Review of Books, writes that Cleaver confessed to the murder to her shortly after committing it.
In his 1978 book Soul on Fire, Cleaver made several claims regarding his exile in Algeria, including that he was supported by regular stipends from the government of North Vietnam, which the United States was then at war with. Cleaver stated that he was followed by other former criminals turned revolutionaries, many of whom, including Booth and Smith, hijacked planes to get to Algeria.
Split and new directions Cleaver and Newton eventually had a disagreement over the necessity of armed struggle as a response to COINTELPRO and other actions by the government against the Black Panthers and other radical groups, which led to Cleaver's eventual expulsion from the BPP. Also Cleaver's interest in North Korea and global anti-imperialist struggle drew ire from other BPP members who felt that he was neglecting the needs of African-Americans at home in the U.S. On March 6, 1972, Newton formally expelled Cleaver after Cleaver called upon the Black Panthers to expel party chief of staff David Hilliard, who had assumed a leadership role while Newton and others were in prison.
Cleaver advocated the escalation of armed resistance into urban guerrilla warfare, while Newton suggested the best way to respond was to put down the gun, which he felt alienated the Panthers from the rest of the black community, and focus on more pragmatic reformist activity by lobbying for increased social programs to aid African-American communities and anti-discrimination laws. Cleaver accused Newton of being an Uncle Tom for choosing to cooperate with white interests rather than overthrow them. The Black Liberation Army took up Cleaver's call for armed struggle.
Fashion design In 1972, Cleaver left Algeria, moving to Paris, France, becoming a born again Christian during time in isolation living underground. He turned his hand to fashion design. Three years later, he released codpiece-revival "virility pants" that he called "the Cleavers", enthusing that they would give men "a chance to assert their masculinity". Cleaver returned to the United States in 1975 to face the unresolved attempted murder charge. Bayard Rustin was the chairman of the Eldridge Cleaver Defense Fund committee, which also included A. Philip Randolph, Nat Hentoff and Dorothy Height, head of the National Council of Negro Women, among others. In 1976, Cleaver told the New York Times that he and his wife were baptized evangelical members of the Word of Life International Church.