5/21/2023 0 Comments Books by eldridge cleaverEdgar Hoover, the militant group with its trademark black berets pursued goals ranging from shadowing Oakland police with gun-toting monitors to providing free breakfasts for poor children.Īrticulate and possessing a fiery oratorical style, Cleaver was appointed the Panthers’ minister of information. The book, which he wrote while in Folsom State Prison for sexual assault, earned him praise as one of the most compelling black writers and social critics of the 1960s.Īfter his release, Cleaver joined the Black Panther Party, attracted, he once said, by its “revolutionary courage.” Branded “the nation’s greatest threat” by FBI Director J. He was perhaps best known for writing “Soul on Ice,” a collection of eloquent essays on prison life, interracial relationships and on being black in white America. By February, he had moved his life to a point where he exchanged pleasantries at a gathering of Pasadena police officers to which he had been invited, telling them: “You’ll never know how happy I am to meet you under these circumstances.”Īll this from a once fierce advocate of violence who shot it out with police and fled into exile from a country he had come to hate.Ĭleaver, tall and broad-shouldered with the erect bearing of a soldier, was a self-educated man with a gift for language.
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