Erik Visits an American Grave, Part 1,621

This is the grave of Eldridge Cleaver.

Born in 1935 in Wabbaseka, Arkansas, Cleaver did not spend much time growing up in the South. His family joined the millions of Black Americans getting out of the South in this era. With the rise of World War II and the expansion of industry into the West, that became another path for the Great Migration and Cleaver’s parents followed it. So he grew up first in Phoenix and then in Los Angeles.

As a kid, Cleaver was a mess. He got involved in the drug trade, theft, and other such things. So where he really grew up was in juvenile prisons. He was arrested in 1953 for the horrible crime of being in possession of marijuana and for that he was sent to Soledad with the adults for the first time. Then in 1958, he was convicted of rape with intent to murder and went back to Soledad and then to San Quentin. He was really lost and was a violent, angry young man.

But in prison, Cleaver started to read. He got a copy of Marx’s The Communist Manifesto. This made some sense to him and so he started reading more and more leftist tracts. By the time he was released from prison in 1966, he was a committed political leftist with a path for revolutionary change in his future. He wanted to turn his back on the person that he once was–a person to be clear that was the responsibility of a racist state engaging in internal colonialism against its minority population–and connect the struggle of Black Americans to the global struggle against racism and colonialism.

And so Cleaver did, at least for awhile. By the time he walked out of prison, he was already writing for Ramparts, the fancy New Left magazine that combined quality production values with revolutionary articles. This was no leaflet run off from someone’s basement. The Black Panther Party in Oakland has just formed. Cleaver got in touch with these people and soon was the Minister of Information. Cleaver and the BPP had a strong connection because both believed the only path forward in the liberation struggle was armed insurrection.

Cleaver published his memoir, Soul on Ice, in 1968. This, along with the Autobiography of Malcolm X, was the most important book published on the Black left in the U.S. during these years. Of course, it told his story, but it also placed that within the global anti-colonialist struggle. For Cleaver, the souls of Black people themselves were colonized by whites, unconsciously. He openly admitted his horrible past, particularly his many rapes. He talked of raping Black girls when he was a kid as a “practice run” for raping white women as an adult. He looked back with horror on his previous life and worked through this past through his politics, attempting to understand the actions of his younger self through this political framework. The book was a huge sensation. He didn’t really learn from his past misogynist violence though.

Cleaver worked closely with other Black Panther leaders in Oakland, especially engaged in the creation of propaganda, cultural centers, and other programs to wake up the Black population to their oppression. He also did not shy away from anti-colonialist violence. In the aftermath of Martin Luther King’s assassination in 1968, Oakland had riots like so many other cities. Cleaver and other Panthers fought back against the violent cops with guns of their own. They shot a couple of cops, though they didn’t kill them. The Panther Bobby Hutton was killed by the cops and Cleaver himself took a bullet. Cleaver later claimed that he had sought this shootout and led the Panthers in an armed formation specifically to kill cops, but given that Cleaver lied a lot, especially later in life, it’s hard to know how true this was at the time. Probably he lied here too. We will get to this more in a minute.

After the shootout, Cleaver was charged with attempted murder and he fled to Cuba. Fidel Castro initially welcomed him, but upon hearing reports that the CIA had infiltrated the Black Panthers, he told him to find a new home. That became Algeria, where Cleaver would base himself for the next few years, becoming a figure of the global anti-colonial struggle, but one without any real connection anymore at home. His wife Kathleen, who still lives and is one of the living legends of the Black Freedom Struggle, joined him and they had their first child there. While there, Kathleen had an affair with another Black Panther. Cleaver shot and killed him. Cleaver traveled to other socialist countries and found one he thought was ideal–North Korea.

In truth, Cleaver never left the thug behind. He broke with Huey Newton (who was well deserving of breaking with, to be fair) over the use of violence. Cleaver wanted more, which was easy to say from Algiers. Cleaver advocated for urban guerilla warfare. Newton made the correct point that the violence and the guns were making enemies in the Black community. Finally, the BPP expelled Cleaver.

Cleaver really lost the thread after this. He converted to evangelical Christianity in the early 70s, while still in Algiers. He moved to Paris and started designing pants with a codpiece that he called “virility pants” that freed men from “penis binding.” He returned to the U.S. in 1975 to face the attempted murder charge. But now that he was no longer a radical, he wasn’t too worried about it. He opened a shop selling his virility pants and pled down to a charge that only included community service. He became a Moonie and then a Mormon. He also had his own religion for awhile that was called Guardians of the Sperm.

Kathleen finally left his violent insane ass in 1981 and they divorced in 1987. Cleaver became a right-wing Republican. That 1980 claim about the cops? Yeah, that came at an event where Cleaver said cops were heroes and the nation needed more of them. He discovered another true religion–free market capitalism. He also started using drugs again. This time it was crack. He was arrested several times in the 80s for this, in between running for California offices as a Republican. Finally, his body gave out. He died in 1998, at the age of 62. He died with his soul put back on ice.

There’s a lot more to say about Cleaver, but we can leave it for comments.

Eldridge Cleaver is buried in Mountain View Cemetery, Altadena, California.

If you would like this series to visit other members of the Black Panthers, you can donate to cover the required expenses here. Fred Hampton is in Haynesville, Louisiana, where white supremacists have shot up his gravestone. Bobby Hutton is in Oakland, California. Previous posts in this series are archived here and here.