Chad in Amsterdam - When Night Becomes Day, Soul on Ice 2.0: The Other Side of Eldridge Cleaver lyrics

Eldridge Cleaver. His is almost a household name, but somehow he has left an ambiguous legacy. His Wikipedia byline reads: “Eldridge Cleaver (August 31, 1935 – May 1, 1998) was an author and a prominent American civil rights leader who began as a dominant member of the Black Panther Party.” Yeah, I guess that is true, but people are missing out on a lot if that's all they know about the man. Born in Arkansas and ending up in Los Angeles as a teenager, Cleaver was well acquainted with the law. He got caught-like most teenagers do-in possession of marijuana and spent several years of his youth detained in juvenile hall. He was later incarcerated as an adult, first for possession of weed and then for a**ault with intent to murder. While in prison Cleaver became involved with the Nation of Islam and found that writing served as his method of maintaining dignity and sanity. He is best known for his first book, Soul on Ice, which served as a compilation of his prison writings. The book was critically acclaimed across racial divisions and Cleaver soon found himself quite the celebrity. He was paroled in 1966 and became editor of Ramparts Magazine, the same institution that noticed his writing while he was in jail and helped him secure his book deal. A self-admitted rapist, Cleaver admits at a certain point of his life he felt that the rape of white women was “an insurrectionary act.” He also admits that he "practiced rape" by preying on Black women within the Black community. Cleaver puts all of his shortcomings, faults and societal disadvantages on paper for the world to read. “I'm perfectly aware that I'm in prison, that I'm a Negro, that I've been a rapist, and that I have a Higher Uneducation. I never know what significance I'm supposed to attach to these factors.” By the book's end stands a man that has transcended his past crimes and prejudice; a paradigm of self-medication without any self-prescribed reefer or physician-prescribed Ritalin. So it seems… After his release, he joined the Ramparts staff and shortly thereafter met Huey P. Newton and the Black Panthers. Cleaver was attracted to the militant nature of the group. He met the Black Panthers in 1966 when they were commissioned to provide protection for Betty Shabazz at a second anniversary memorial for the a**a**ination of Malcolm X. Cleaver described the event as such in an essay entitled “The Courage to k**: Meeting the Panthers." "Suddenly the room fell silent. The crackling undercurrent that for weeks had made it impossible to get one's point across when one had the floor was gone; there was only the sound of the lock clicking as the front door opened, and then the soft shuffle of feet moving quietly toward the circle… I spun round in my seat and saw the most beautiful sight I had ever seen: four black men wearing black berets, powder blue shirts, black leather jackets, black trousers, shiny black shoes-and each with a gun! In front was Huey P. Newton with a riot pump shot gun in his right hand, barrel pointed down to the floor. Beside him was Bobby Seale, the handle of a .45 caliber automatic showing from its holster on his right hip, just below the hem of his jacket. A few steps behind Seale was Bobby Hutton, the barrel of his shotgun at his feet. Next to him was Sherwin Forte, an M1 carbine with a banana clip cradles in his arms." Following their public split, Huey P. Newton said that Cleaver was “obsessed with the gun” and “looking for a father figure.” Possibly. The Black Panther Party made the gun look s**y. For a convict seeking a father-figure, the Panthers were like some kick-a** angels of d**h. Mao said that power comes from the barrel of a gun, but Newton and the Panthers interpreted the gun as being the equalizer against the oppressor. It granted them tantamount footing with which they could begin their revolutionary agenda. Like all Blacks before him, Cleaver was only privy to the non-violent methods that characterized most civil rights protests before 1966. Cleaver can be considered the impetus for the fixation concerning violence that many Black Panthers developed. Shortly thereafter, Huey gets charged with murder in Oakland. While Huey was being held in prison awaiting trial, Cleaver becomes the figurehead of the Black Panther Party. Cleaver was a master wordsmith and firebrand. He shocked audiences with fiery, precise rhetoric. He was the creator of the phrase, “You're either part of the solution or you're part of the problem.” The iconic picture of Newton in the bamboo wicker chair holding the spear in one hand and the rifle in the other was Cleaver's idea. He spoke of the Minister of Defense in language of apotheosis. “Yes, Huey is our Jesus, but we want him down from the cross.” He considered him to be “the dynamo, the source, the prime mover.” His respect for Huey was genuine and honest. The two men would eventually have a public disagreement which resulted in the dissolution of an organization that America desperately needed. As is often the case between Black American intellectuals, there exists a irreconcilable rift between conflicting philosophies that is never mollified through compromise, but rather aggravated by hubris and the unwillingness of leaders to communicate effectively. In 1956 the FBI created the Counter Intelligence Program, casually referred to as Cointelpro. Their mission was to disrupt and destroy any organizations that threatened the white-anglo power structure of America. Organizations they profiled and infiltrated included the Communist Party of the United States of America, the Socialist Workers Party, the Nation of Islam, Students for a Democratic Society, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, the American Indian Movement, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the Weather Underground, and for reasons of affirmative action, the American Nazi Party and the Ku Klux Klan. One of Cointelpro's prime objectives was to stop the rise of a “Black messiah” who could unify Black Americans under one common cause. J. Edgar Hoover was obsessed with the destruction of Newton and the Panthers. In September of 1968, when the concept of "Black Power" became popular after Tommie Smith and John Carlos threw up their fists after respectively winning first and third places in the 200 meter race in the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City, Hoover called the Black Panther Party "The greatest threat to the internal security of the country." After 1969, the Party became the primary focus of Cointelpro's operations. Cointelpro used various methods of subterfuge to disrupt the Black Panther Party. Spies were embedded into the organization. They did their best to keep prominent members tied up in legal battles, so that they became trapped within in an institutional limbo. Cartoons that promoted the fallacious belief that the Black Panther Party was racist and planned to k** whites were circulated in white and Black communities as if they were official Black Panther Party information. Cointelpro would even duplicate the handwriting of certain members and send letters to other branches which created turmoil within the Party. In certain cases Cointelpro commissioned murder, as was the case with the a**a**ination of the 21-year old civil rights prodigy, Fred Hampton, Sr., who was a**a**inated in his home, result of information provided by informant William O'Neal. After Huey P. Newton was released from jail pending a retrial, Cleaver had already left the country. Two days after the a**a**ination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. on April 6, 1968, the Oakland Police engaged in a melee with some Black Panthers. The end result was that Li'l Bobby Hutton was unjustifiably k**ed and Eldridge Cleaver was shot in the leg and apprehended even though he exited a house naked so that the police would know he was unarmed. Cleaver was later charged with three accounts of attempted murder of a police officer and three counts of a**ault on a police officer; quite odd, as the only people murdered and wounded were Black Panthers. After he was released about two months later on bail, he was ordered to return to prison for violating his parole. Cleaver ditched bail and fled the country. This event took place directly after Cleaver's unsuccessful 1968 Presidential campaign in which he ran as a candidate for the Peace and Freedom Party. His exile sent him first to Cuba. Unlike Newton who later fled to Cuba in 1977, Cleaver did not enjoy his time there. Cleaver claims he experienced institutional racism in Cuba, and that the country did everything possible to hide the history of Antonio Maceo Grajales, a Black Cuban who was the true father of the Cuban Revolution. From there he fled to Algeria where he reunited with his wife Kathleen Cleaver, pregnant at the time with their first child. It was while Eldridge was in Algeria that he and Huey began their public feud. Cleaver organized a faction of the Black Panther Party in Algeria but maintained communications with the Party leadership based in America. Cleaver actually hosted Dr. Timothy Leary and his wife in Algeria after he had been sprung out of jail in America by the Weathermen. Cleaver admitted to doing LSD with the good doctor, but later thought Dr. Leary to be irresponsible for promoting this drug to the youth and the revolutionary ma**es as “conscious expanding.” Cleaver believed that in order to administer a successful revolution, it is somewhat important that the revolutionaries were not tripping balls off LSD. “[Y]our god is dead because his mind has been blown by acid,” is what Cleaver told Leary. Leary told Cleaver he was “a paranoid n******g.” Cleaver then placed Leary under “revolutionary arrest.” When Cleaver's troop in Algeria was located and defeated Dr. Leary was transported back to America and he and Cleaver were placed in the same federal prison in San Diego. Most of Cleaver's former revolutionary comrades and friends wrote him off in the late 1970s. He and Dr. Leary remained friends. In 1971 the FBI intensified their misinformation campaign against the Panthers. Cleaver was receiving phony letters from “comrades” claiming that Newton was disgusted with him. Newton was getting phony letters from anonymous folks that claimed Cleaver was planning to a**a**inate him. Their alliance fell apart live on television. February 28, 1971, 'AM San Francisco' had Newton on as a guest. Cleaver phoned in from Algeria and began airing private Party business on air. Cleaver dismissed Newton from the Panthers, and then Newton dismissed Cleaver from the Panthers. The Black Panthers split into two factions, a left and right wing. The right wing, which consisted of Newton's supporters, were focused upon the survival programs and empowering impoverished communities. The left wing, Cleaver's faction, included the notoriously violent New York 21 faction of the Black Panthers and others like them that believed that the emphasis upon the survival programs was a distraction to the true issue which was the inevitable armed revolution. The two factions never reconciled. David Hilliard, in a letter to the Black Panther's European office, called Cleaver a “murderer” and “a punk without genitals.” Elaine Brown, the last leader of the Black Panther Party, said Cleaver was a “power crazy n******g.” Many Panthers also questioned Cleaver's s**uality. Newton made the point that Cleaver was looking for a father figure (which he had seemed to have in Newton) and erroneously thought the Black Panthers to be “the Revolution and the Party” as opposed to being “a political vehicle through which the people could express their revolutionary desires.” Some thought Cleaver mistook fame as support from the people. The feud drew parallels to other great Black leaders that could not amicably work out their differences; Elijah Muhammad and Malcolm X, and even the Black Panthers themselves and Ron Karenga's militant group, US. The fragmentation of the American Black Panther Party marked the end of the international branches of the Party. Cleaver resigned from the Algerian branch and after his Black Liberation Party and Right On! Magazine ventures both failed, he illegally relocated to France where he later met up with his wife Kathleen and their two children in January of 1972. France was the location of Cleaver's incredible transformation. He was struggling financially during his time in France as most of the proceeds he had earned from 'Soul on Ice' and a proposed book were mostly depleted and the stipends he received from China ceased. The racism Cleaver experienced in Communist Cuba began his reevaluation of his political philosophy. In Algeria, he was called a “kulasha” (slave) by the Arabs and was told that Black Americans were considered arrogant due to “the way [they] move and carry their bodies.” He recounted an event in a French television station in which he was watching a televised report of the defeated American troops pull out of Vietnam. He was sitting in between the editor of Germany's Der Spiegel magazine and a reporter from France's Le Monde Diplomatique newspaper. The two were laughing at the scene on the television and described the “U.S. Marines as nothing more than Boy Scouts who couldn't win a fight against an old ladies club.” Cleaver quickly retorted, “You know what man, there was a day when you were mighty glad to see the U.S. military liberate you from him.” He was becoming increasingly homesick and felt like a fugitive. He wanted to return to America, but his return meant facing numerous charges. The ultimate injury came when his children begged him not to speak English because it “hurt their ears.” Then his son began to play soccer. Cleaver started to think suicidal thoughts and decided to act on them. At his residence in Paris, Cleaver was eating dinner with his family for what he believed would be the last time. He had not revealed his intended suicide to them. He then left for his private apartment in Cannes. There he sat on the balcony, pistol in hand, contemplating his d**h. For whatever reason, his attention was drawn to the nearly full moon. As he continued to stare at the moon, it began to flicker and transmogrify. He then saw the image of his own face in the moon. This image changed into Fidel Castro. That image transformed into Mao Tse-tung. Mao became Marx. Then the image disappeared. After that he saw the face of Jesus Christ in the moon. It was the one face that did not disappear. Cleaver began to shake uncontrollably. He put the pistol down, fell to his knees and began to cry. The Lord's Prayer, the 23rd Psalm, which he had not thought of for decades, manifested in his mind. He remembered that Kathleen had brought a Bible that his mother had given them before they went into exile. From his bookshelf he located this Bible. He rummaged frantically through the pages, but could not locate the 23rd Psalm. He described himself as “overwhelmed with a spirit of peace and total exhaustion.” He then put the Bible on a table and the gun next to it and went to sleep. When he woke the next day, he felt recharged and completely reborn. He claimed, “I had received a spiritual message that I must surrender to the authorities, go into that prison cell, and I would come out the other side. There was no fear. I just knew I would come out the other side.” He headed back to Paris to tell Kathleen the whole incident and began to make plans concerning how to return to America. Nikki Giovanni wrote in Encore magazine, “The news from Paris, France, that Black fire-eating, anti-racist, anti-s**ist, anti-middle-cla** militant Eldridge Cleaver is considering a return to the United States is not surprising. That he left in the first place and the circumstances of his leaving are perhaps the real news story.” Others insinuated that Cleaver had been conspiring with the same capitalist powers he once vowed to destroy. In May of 1973, Huey P. Newton was interviewed by Playboy Magazine. Much of the interview dealt with the recent split with Cleaver and Newton's feelings regarding his former comrade. He described Cleaver as “a very disturbed and unhappy person” and blamed him for ‘the filthy-speech movement” which resulted in most of the Black Panther Party, during Huey's imprisonment, “[going] into [places such as the Black church] to give political-education cla**es for the general community and [using] “motherf**er” every other word.” He also challenged Cleaver's s**uality, claiming that rapists he knew of in prisons often became h*mos**uals. He believed that Cleaver had issues with his masculinity and that thought of the gun as a metaphorical co*k. “When he came out of prison he became so attached to the Panthers and the idea of the gun. I think the gun was a substitute for his penis; he called it his "rod." Newton also went on to describe an alleged encounter between Cleaver and James Baldwin, whose writings Cleaver had lambasted in his essay “Notes on a Native Son”… "Well, there was something that happened on the occasion when he and I met Baldwin. We met Baldwin shortly after he returned from Turkey, I guess in 1966 or the early part of '67. Eldridge had been invited to a party to meet him, and he asked me to go along. So we went over to San Francisco in his Volkswagen van and we got there first. Soon after, Baldwin arrived. Baldwin is a very small man in stature; I guess about five-one. Eldridge is about six-four, you know; at the time, he weighed about 250 pounds. Anyway, Baldwin just walked over to him and embraced him around the waist. And Eldridge leaned down from his full height and engaged Baldwin in a long, pa**ionate French kiss. They kissed each other on the mouth for a long time. When we left, Eldridge kept saying, "Don't tell anyone." I said all right. And I kept my word -- until now." Because Eldridge Cleaver never disputed these claims, they did much to effeminate his image. Most Americans who had been privy to his exploits in America considered him to be a pale comparison of his former self, as well as a possible traitor and government informant. Cleaver held firm to his original position that the political climate of America had changed with the resignation of Nixon and the end of the Vietnam War and he now believed that he could finally get a fair trial. His critics contended there was little change in America concerning police brutality or racism and that this was a mask for more clandestine affiliations with American authorities. In a 1975 interview with Henry Louis Gates, Cleaver, still in exile in Paris, stated that he considered the Third World revolutions as “a skin game.” He also acknowledged his concern with cla** struggle. “Ultimately,” Cleaver claims, “all struggle is Cla** struggle; but you cannot overlook national questions.” He thought that Black Americans needed to eliminate all cla**es within the race and this would create unity amongst Black Americans. He also acknowledged that Marx was a racist, therefore Black Americans should not blindly except his philosophies as intrinsic to their struggle. As noted by Kathleen Rout in her biopic of Cleaver, “what was gone was the rhetoric, the anger, and the sense that he was part of a worldwide, historic uprising of the “colored” ma**es.” In September 1975, about a month before his return to the United States, Cleaver tells a reporter how he had been studying Eastern erotic literature as of late. He stated in the interview, “My whole motivation is because… I've always been keen about s**. I like it. So you know the whole thing about the Kama Sutra. There's something to learn there, right?” He now considered himself a student of these philosophies and through this study came his soi-disant title of “tantric guru.” Cleaver said the title was “a label I bestowed upon myself, because I know who I am. I've mastered it. That's why I made these pants.” The Black Panther Party was always fashionable in the mostly black uniform highlighted by the powder blue shirt, but never would the average American had predicted that a former revolutionary would enter the world of fashion. Like everything else he seemed to do in his life, behind Cleaver's pants was a philosophy. Cleaver sought to liberate men from the oppressiveness of the white man's pants. He became “interested in the crime of rape and why people rape.” He claimed that his pants would abolish the crime of indecent exposure. Cleaver planned to create “decent exposure” with his new pants. One interviewer noted that the pants “flaunt[ed] the male s** organ so brazenly that no photo can be printed in a family magazine.” He stated that his inspiration for the pants “goes back to the problems of human s**uality and of… what I call the right to f**[.]” Armed with his new penis pants, philosophies and Jesus, Cleaver contacted the U.S. emba**y in Paris. Within three weeks he had the necessary papers to enter the United States, where he was to be arrested immediately upon arrival. November 15, 1975, the two Cleaver children were flown to Pasadena to stay with their grandmother. Kathleen stayed behind to finish packing in Paris. Eldridge arrived in New York at 5pm to no supporters, detractors, friends or family, just one Black and one white FBI agent who read him his rights and placed him under arrest. On November 19, 1975, the same day Cleaver was transported to San Diego, Chino State Penitentiary to be exact, the New York Times ran an article written by Cleaver entitled, “Why I Left the U.S. and Why I Am Returning.” In this article Cleaver states… "With all of its faults, the American political system is the freest and most democratic in the world. The system needs to be improved, with democracy spread to all areas of life, particularly the economic. All of these changes must be conducted through our established institutions, and people with grievances must find political methods for obtaining redress." New Year's Eve of 1975 Cleaver attempted to contact the Black Panther Party via collect call from Chino State. A Black Panther answers the phone. When asked if they would except a collect call from Eldridge Cleaver, the guy first laughed, said “Wait a minute,” and took about ten minutes to take the call off hold and say, “We will not accept the call.” The Black Panther Party's lawyer Gerry would not represent him due to “other commitments.” The Black Panther newspaper called for justice for Cleaver and a fair trial in which they predicted the people he once attempted to represent would turn on him. The Black Panthers also blamed Cleaver for the d**hs of Li'l Bobby Hutton and Sam Napier, the former of which had been murdered by men loyal to Cleaver, but it was believed that his execution had not been mandated by Cleaver. Cleaver had no friends left from the movement, nor did he have any friends from his years before the movement began. He had become forgotten during his years in exile, and upon his return he was considered non-threatening. In Chino State there was a prison ministry group called "The God Squad." During their prayer meetings other prisoners would throw bars of soap and flick water from brushes dipped in commodes at the Christians. Because he didn't want to appear weak to the other prisoners, Cleaver initially refused to join the prayer services even though he wanted to. After a few months he eventually joined them in fellowship. The word spread rapidly that Eldridge Cleaver had found Christ. An article was written in the Los Angeles Times that mocked Cleaver's conversion. Cleaver contacted the press shortly thereafter and gave interviews concerning his conversion to Christianity. While he got streams of hate mail from former comrades and supporters, he began to get letters of support from Christians, mostly white Americans, who empathized with his plight and truly believed that he had accepted Jesus Christ as his Lord and Savior. Cleaver still had a one million dollar bail to deal with, and until he could ascertain such an amount, it seemed likely that he would remain in prison until his trial. A wealthy and extremely pious Philadelphian named Arthur DeMoss, president of National Liberty Corporation, read the article concerning Cleaver in the Los Angeles Times and decided to offer his a**istance. DeMoss considered himself a former sinner, a number runner-turned-insurance mogul, who was able to give his life to Christ, so he sought out individuals such as Cleaver to help them during their transition to Christianity. In June 1976, DeMoss was able to visit Cleaver in Chino. Reportedly, the two talked for a couple of hours. DeMoss went to his fellow Christians with praise for Cleaver, and the Christians showed their support in the form of contributions for Cleaver's bail. On Friday the 13th, August 1976, Eldridge Cleaver was released in time for the weekend. He got a telly and spent the weekend with Kathleen booed up in San Francisco. That following Monday, he and Kathleen flew to Los Angeles so that Cleaver could see his mother for the first time in eight years. That Wednesday, Kathleen and Eldridge Cleaver were in San Diego where the Reverend Billy Graham was preaching at one of his crusades. Cleaver was able to meet with Graham personally. Cleaver had admitted to hating Graham at a point of his life, but now was actually anticipating the meeting. Without Kathleen present the two men prayed and spoke for over an hour. The statement Graham made that resonated the most with Cleaver was “Eldridge… one thing you must never forget-never embarra** the Lord.” On Sunday, August the 29th, Cleaver was a guest on Meet the Press. When asked if he had made a deal with the authorities, he maintained the position that he had not. Cleaver noted “deep transformations in [his] own personal life” and that his opine had changed concerning how change should be administered within the country. Cleaver also a**ured the public that his conversion to Christianity was not a hoax nor a ruse to influence his trial. In reference to the Black Panther Party, Cleaver stated, “I think that we were a little naïve in our approach… that we were excessive in our language… that we scared a lot of people, not so much by our practices, our activities, but by the way that we described certain situations, and if I had to do it all over, with hindsight, I would do it differently.” This appearance was followed by a week of rest and relaxation at the DeMoss Philadelphia home. On September 14, 1976 Cleaver publicly declared that he planned to go on the lecture circuit as an evangelist. He had just signed with a national speakers' bureau as well as ascertaining another book deal, dealing with his spiritual and philosophical transformation. He was paired on a tour with Charles Colson, former special council to President Nixon. Colson was well-known as "Richard Nixon's hard man, the 'evil genius' of an evil administration.” He was responsible for leaking information from Daniel Elsberg's psychiatric files to the press and was subsequently indicted in March of 1974 for conspiring to cover up the Watergate robbery. He pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice and was given a one to three year sentence, a $5000 fine and was disbarred. He did seven months at the Maxwell Correctional Facility, and was released early because of pertinent issues within his family. Upon his release he began Prison Fellowship, a penitentiary-based Christian organization that has in more recent years worked closely with the George W. Bush presidential administration. Because of his celebrity status, Cleaver could consistently get booked on television and for whatever crusade was in session. However, many thought that his proselytizing did not possess the emotional pa**ion that Cleaver was characteristically known for. At the time, the Cleavers' had more than $200,000 in outstanding bills. At all of his speaking engagements, Cleaver pa**ed around the collection plate. During a sermon/barbecue in Orange County, it is rumored that Cleaver received $16,500 in donations. Cleaver had a particular template as an evangelist. He would speak of his disillusionment with communism and then his conversion to American patriotism and Christianity. His support of the right-wing became more vocal, as he would tout the politics of Henry Kissinger, criticize the NAACP, stir Soviet paranoia and belittle the women's liberation movement. He and Kathleen were officially baptized Sunday, the 10th of October, 1976 in a hotel swimming pool in Burbank, California. Art DeMoss was present and smiling. Cleaver preached with white evangelicals until the spring of 1977 when he, Kathleen and DeMoss decided to start the Eldridge Cleaver Crusades, which was to be based out of Stanford, California. Cleaver's plan was to become the Black version of Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker's PTL (Praise the Lord) Club. In May of 1979, Cleaver, with DeMoss' funds, purchased 80 acres in Nevada which he planned to construct a “multimillion dollar facility” that would be the headquarters of his crusade. Shortly before this in 1978, Cleaver released Soul on Fire, an obvious attempt to capitalize on his former success. Because of certain omissions and inconsistencies within the book, it got panned and sold very poorly. While attempting to solidify his new position as an evangelist, Cleaver simultaneously continued to expand upon his “s**ual guru” role. The September 21, 1978 issue of Jet Magazine featured a second article on Cleaver and a picture of him modeling the infamous penis pants outside of the Los Angeles boutique where they were manufactured. Jet succinctly described the “Cleavers” as having “two types of eye-catching pouches: one is oval shaped like a football player's jockey cup and the other features a tubular shaped extension for the man's penis and an adjoining smaller pouch for his testicles.” Their first article ran two years earlier had Cleaver describing what he thought to be the “fig leaf mentality.” The attempt to cover the penis was an attempt to destroy the “content of erotic art forms” because the s**ual urges that looking at the penis produced actually resulted in a decrease in efficiency. “co*k out” creates too much of a distraction for the average peasant to handle. For the perpetuation of the market system it was necessary to cover up the co*k. In his second interview of 1978, Cleaver expounds upon his philosophy concerning the “Cleavers.” Cleaver thought himself to be “very s**ually warped” earlier in his life, but because he had “studied as much about human s**uality as professional s**ual therapists,” he was able to overcome his deviant s**ual nature. He was planning on opening a “finishing school for boys” where they could learn proper manners and “how to go about getting themselves girls without having to resort to rape.” Also in this master plan was “a 24-hour rape hotline for men who have either committed rape or are on the verge of rape.” Even from a sciential standpoint the Cleavers were revolutionary. Cleaver claimed that “heat had a decomposing effect on the s**m and traditional pants press the penis under the belly. My pants take it back out.” Whereas western pants “castrated” the man, “Cleavers” “honored” the penis; this being contrary to traditional fashion honoring only “the intellect-the head and face.” Cleaver invested $42,000 of his own money to form Eldridge Cleaver Ltd. In addition to the boutique, he also bought a retail location in West Hollywood where the pants were sold for $20 to $30 a piece. Eldridge Cleaver humbly declared that the “Cleavers” were “one of the best ideas I've ever had.” In November of 1979, Cleaver pleaded guilty to three a**ault charges. The remaining attempted-murder charges were dropped. He was ultimately ordered to do 1200 hours of community service and probation. In 1980 Cleaver became affiliated with Reverend Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church, and began to speak at functions supporting their ministry. While working with Unification Church, Cleaver began to organize former m**ms and transmogrified his Christianity into what he referred to as “Christlam.” He effectively ceased the operations of the Eldridge Cleaver Crusades, thus ending his relationship with DeMoss. In September 1980 he was quoted saying that the “dwelling place of God” was not in Mecca, but rather “in the male s**m.” He then created “the Guardians of the Sperm,” which served as a “social auxiliary” to his newly formed church in Oakland. He believed that the enemies of the s**m, “ignorant scientists and lesbian propagandists,” were constantly at work. To thwart these powers, Cleaver began to teach “Urban Geography” to the young men of his church. “Urban Geography” meant the following to Cleaver: “You see a good-looking woman on the street corner. Immediately you want to screw her. But you let her get away because you don't know how to follow her. We teach pursuit.” In response to charges that he physically abused Kathleen, Cleaver retorts, “I don't mind being known as a wife-beater. There are all kinds of institutions to serve these so-called battered wives. What nobody's saying is that most of the time the b**h needed her a** kicked.” In the summer of 1980, Cleaver wrote Dr. Huey P. Newton a letter in an attempt to fire up the revolution once again. He told Newton that “one of the best things that could happen in America is if you and I would bury our old hatchets, which in fact have been buried by time and events, and help constitute a force in America dedicated to serving our needs at this juncture.” He rallied against his former enemy, Ronald Reagan, and his run for the presidency. “Ronald Reagan is running for President… Gas, Food, Water and Time are running out.” He also stated that Blacks in the 80s were lacking any appropriate leadership. He thought that “everyone imprisoned under Richard Nixon” should be exonerated of their crimes. He appealed to Huey by admitting that “There is yet one more skeleton in the American closet: THE BLACK MAN. It's time for us to come out. We need dramatic examples of conciliation and reconciliation amongst Black men. Our common denominator is our ethnic gender. Our standard is one drop of Black blood and a set of balls to be eligible for membership.” Dr. Newton never issued a response. By September of the same year, Cleaver was endorsing Ronald Reagan for president; the same man who said in 1968, "If Eldridge Cleaver is allowed to teach our children, they may come home one night and slit our throats." Kathleen and the Cleaver children moved to New Haven, Connecticut where she had just received a full scholarship to Yale University. Cleaver was left alone inside of California. He began to work as a tree manicurist for a Mormon fellow and lived in a rooming house with about nine others that did the same job. He continued writing and lecturing and began to make original flowerpots for sale. He finished his community service in June of 1982 and shortly thereafter joined the Mormon Church. Due to his dissatisfaction with President Carter, Cleaver continued along the path of his conservative politics. It was very strange that he was now supporting the same California senator that voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, who refused to debate with him while the two men were foes in 1968. In 1982, Cleaver gave up on his revolutionary pants and Christlam to become a staunch advocate of right-wing politics. At a speech at Yale in February of 1982 that was organized with the a**istance of his separated wife-now an a**istant professor-Cleaver tells the mostly Black audience, “Ronald Reagan has said that no longer will the Federal Government house, clothe, and feed Black people. I am glad about that because it will force Blacks to unify and lobby for their needs. Reagan had delivered to Black people a “Biblical message,” “Lazarus, go for yourself.” Cleaver ran for House representative in February of 1984 against Representative Ron Dellums, former political ally of the Black Panther Party. He lambasted Dellums' friend Jesse Jackson, claiming he was not the humanitarian he claimed to be, but rather a shifty politician playing the “race card” in an effort to further his own political career. Cleaver charged Dellums as “a pliable tool in the hands of the Marxist-Leninist puppet masters of Berkeley[.]” Cleaver was easily defeated by Dellums. He again tried to run for office in 1986 against Democrat Alan Cranston. Cleaver was now pro-d**h penalty, anti-abortion, anti-immigration and anti-welfare, stances of which did nothing towards his winning the Senate seat in Southern California. He declared Reagan as his hero. When asked if he had any other heroes, Cleaver mentions, “the Pope and John Wayne.” After he lost the election, Cleaver shifted his focus to other “really important issues, like the plight of retarded children.” After 1986 Cleaver became mostly forgotten by the general American public and when he was remembered, he was considered a charlatan. Bobby Seale says of Cleaver, “Eldridge Cleaver? I refuse even to talk to him… He's not a true representative of the Black Panther Party. Eldridge was always trying to start a shoot-out while I was trying to organize breakfasts for children.” A greeting card was made with a picture of the Cleavers on it, Ward, Beaver and Eldridge and a note inside that read, “Happy Birthday from Ward, June and the boys.” He stayed in Berkeley, making pots and continuing to campaign for conservative issues. In the fall of 1987 he was arrested for possession of c**aine. He was again arrested in February 1988 for burglary in which he claims he was “moving furniture for homeless people.” He received three years probation for the offence. Eldridge Cleaver continued upon a vagrant life, accumulating bills and making ends barely meet through various speaking engagements. He remained vigilant towards the plight of the poor and equality for all people. He quit d** after his last run-in for c**aine possession in 1994, in which he was almost fatally wounded. He became an advocate of a female president and environmental concerns. Eldridge Cleaver died result of a heart attack on May 1, 1998. He was 62. Eldridge, how is it different to be black today in 1997 than it was when you were in that basement in Oakland 30 years ago? We have the largest black middle cla** that we've ever had in history. 45% of all black children live at or beneath the poverty line. It's like we have the best of times and the worst of times. What's that all about? CLEAVER: That's because our black middle cla** has followed an a**imilationist ethic. They have become white and they've adopted all the worst features of America in terms of not caring about the other people. Like the white ruling cla** never cared about poor white people, let alone about black people and other minorities and these blacks who are following W.E.B. Du Bois' formula of educating that 10% who will then come back and lift up the rest of the people -- the argument that was had between W.E.B. Du Bois and Booker T. Washington was over how we're going to manage this thing. Booker T. said we've got to teach these people how to work, then they'll get jobs, then they'll be able to afford education and then they can do that. And Du Bois said no, we've got to concentrate on the intellectual development of the people and get 10% of our people educated and then they can help the other people, but if you just learn a trade and you don't know what's going on, that ain't going nowhere. I say both of them were right. We need both of what they promised and we've got both of what they promised. But they didn't have a unifying vision and consequently we've got an enlarged black bourgeoisie but they have departed from the basis of the black bourgeoisie according to E. Franklin Frazer. This was the professional cla**es and that was their economic base but the progress that has taken place has given a new economic base to the black bourgeoisie, to the expanded black -- now their economic base is political as well as up front economic and they still have a professional cla** but it is been expanded because you have a lot of black people with a whole lot of money coming from these other pursuits. Add to that, the million-dollar salaries to football players, basketball players and baseball players, not that they're doing anything constructive with all of that money, but they have it. But they didn't bring it back to pull the other people up and so it's like the devil take the hindmost. That is what we're dealing with so that the black bourgeoisie is as corrupt and immoral as the white bourgeoisie and that is the problem.