Collection Summary
Information for Researchers
Administrative Information
Biographical Information
Scope and Content of Collection
Collection Summary
Collection Title: Eldridge Cleaver papers
Date (inclusive): 1963-1988
Collection Number: BANC MSS 91/213 c
Creators :
Cleaver, Eldridge, 1935-1998
Extent:
Number of containers: 32 cartons, 7 boxes, 1 volume, 1 oversize folder, 2 oversize boxes
Linear feet: Circa 42
Repository: The Bancroft Library
University of California, Berkeley
Berkeley, California, 94720-6000
Phone: (510) 642-6481
Fax: (510) 642-7589
Email: bancref@library.berkeley.edu
URL: http://bancroft.berkeley.edu/
Abstract:
The Eldridge Cleaver papers document Cleaver's lifetime as an activist and writer. Dating from 1963-1988, the papers consist
of correspondence, writings, including manuscripts for his works
Soul on Ice and
Soul on Fire, and papers from his affiliation with the Black Panther Party as Minister of Information and as head of the International
Section during his exile. Also included are files of the Eldridge Cleaver Crusades, the Eldridge Cleaver Defense Committee,
and Cleaver for Congress. The bulk of the collection consists of legal files pertaining to the shootout with the Oakland Police
Department on April 6, 1968.
Languages Represented: Collection materials are in English.
Physical Location: Many of the Bancroft Library collections are stored offsite and advance notice may be required for use. For current information
on the location of these materials, please consult the Library's online catalog.
Information for Researchers
Access
Collection is open for research, with the following exceptions: Letters from Kathleen Cleaver restricted until 2025. Some
materials require conservation before use.
Publication Rights
All requests to reproduce, publish, quote from or otherwise use collection materials must be submitted in writing to the Head
of Public Services, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, 94270-6000. Consent is given on behalf of The
Bancroft Library as the owner of the physical items and is not intended to include or imply permission from the copyright
owner. Such permission must be obtained from the copyright owner. See:
http://bancroft.berkeley.edu/reference/permissions.html .
Restrictions also apply to digital representations of the original materials. Use of digital files is restricted to research
and educational purposes.
Preferred Citation
[Identification of item], Eldridge Cleaver Papers, BANC MSS 91/213 c, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.
Alternate Forms Available
Copies of letters between Eldridge Cleaver and Beverly Axelrod also available on microfilm with call number BANC FILM 2062:1-2.
Related Collections
Materials concerning Social Analysis 137X course, 1968-69, CU-526
The University and the Cleaver Course controversy. A position paper issued by Center for Participant Education and individuals
representing the campus community, 308ki.cpe.cc.1968
Separated Material
Photographs have been transferred to the Pictorial Collections of The Bancroft Library (BANC PIC 1991.078).
Indexing Terms
The following terms have been used to index the description of this collection in the library's online public access catalog.
Cleaver, Eldridge, 1935-1998
Black Panther Party
Eldridge Cleaver Crusades
African American political activists
Cleaver, Kathleen
Administrative Information
Acquisition Information
The Eldridge Cleaver Papers were purchased by The Bancroft Library from Eldridge Cleaver in 1990 and 1995. Additional items
were purchased in 2003.
Accruals
No additions are expected.
System of Arrangement
Arranged to the folder level.
Processing Information
Processed by Tanya Hollis in 2005-2006.
Biographical Information
Leroy Eldridge Cleaver rose to prominence in the late 1960s as a leading African American intellectual and political revolutionary.
As minister of information for the Black Panther Party during tumultuous years of social upheaval, Cleaver became a symbol
of rebellion, freedom, and eloquence for those seeking political and social change. His 1968 best-selling book of essays,
Soul on Ice, served as a guidebook for radicals in the New Left, student, and civil rights movements.
Cleaver was born on August 3, 1935, in Wabbaseka, Arkansas. When he was still young, the family moved to Phoenix, and in 1946
the family moved to the Watts section of Los Angeles. During his teenage years in Los Angeles, Cleaver was arrested for bicycle
theft and for selling marijuana, and was sent to two different reformatories. In 1954, he was again arrested for dealing marijuana
and was sentenced to two-and-a-half years at the California State Prison at Soledad.
Released from prison, Cleaver resumed dealing drugs and embarked on a series of rapes, perpetrated, first, on black women,
then on white women. In 1958, roughly a year after his release from the Soledad prison, Cleaver was arrested and charged
with attempted rape and assault with intent to kill a nurse in a parking lot. He was convicted for assault, and sent to prison.
During his subsequent eight-year stay in the San Quentin and Folsom prisons, Cleaver read widely and became a member and minister
of the Nation of Islam (often called the Black Muslims). He also became an admirer of Nation of Islam leader Malcolm X. When
Malcolm X broke from the Nation in 1963, Cleaver followed his example.
With the assistance of Beverly Axelrod, a white San Francisco lawyer, Cleaver was released from prison for the second time
in 1965. During his incarceration, Axelrod and Cleaver corresponded and had a brief love affair, and Axelrod helped Cleaver
get several essays published in
Ramparts, an influential left-wing magazine. These essays, in turn, built support for Cleaver's cause among members of the U.S. intellectual
community, including writer Norman Mailer. The support of such intellectuals helped persuade the parole board to release Cleaver
from prison.
After his parole, Cleaver began writing for
Ramparts. Two years later, in 1967, while living in the San Francisco Bay area, Cleaver married Kathleen Neal, who had been an activist
with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). That same year, he befriended Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale, cofounders
of the Black Panthers; he soon became the party's Minister of Information. As spokesperson for the Panthers, Cleaver helped
articulate the group's Ten Point platform, which included demands for Black self-determination and an immediate end to police
brutality and the right to self-defense.
In February 1968, Cleaver published
Soul on Ice, which quickly became a best-seller and was named Book of the Year by
The New York Times. The book includes essays on Cleaver's relationship to Malcolm X, Cleaver's rejection of U.S. capitalism, the solidarity
between African Americans and citizens of third-world countries, U.S. imperialism, the relationship between sexuality and
race in the United States, and Cleaver's admiration of the student movement of the 1960s.
The success of
Soul on Ice, the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. and the imprisonment of Black Panther Chairman, Huey P. Newton, helped propel
Cleaver to political prominence. In 1968, the Peace and Freedom Party nominated him for the U.S. presidency. Cleaver campaigned
for a revolutionary movement that would integrate Black and white radicals; he received 30,000 votes.
Cleaver's success as a political leader in the U.S. was short-lived. On April 6, 1968 (two days after Martin Luther King,
Jr. was assassinated), Cleaver and fellow Panther, Bobby Hutton, were involved in a shootout with the Oakland police. Hutton
was killed and Cleaver was arrested. He was released on a writ of
habeus corpus, and then fled to Cuba after a higher court revoked his release in November, beginning seven years of exile in Cuba, Algiers,
and Paris.
Cleaver continued his radical activity overseas. In 1969, the Black Panther Party opened its International Section in Algeria
under his guidance. He led two Panther delegations to Asia to meet with leaders in North Vietnam, North Korea, and China.
However, Cleaver's exile was also accompanied by a decline in his influence at home and marked by rifts with Black Panther
Party leadership in the U.S. - rifts that were exploited by the FBI's COINTELPRO Program. In 1971, Cleaver broke with the
Panthers and, along with his wife, Kathleen, and other former international members, formed the Revolutionary Peoples' Communication
Network (RPCN). Cleaver grew increasingly disillusioned with the Algerian government's lack of support; in January 1973, Cleaver
reunited with Kathleen in Paris. Eventually, the French government granted him asylum. While in exile, the couple had two
children, Antonio Maceo, and daughter Joju.
Eventually, Cleaver could no longer abide life away from the United States, and he negotiated his return, on the F.B.I.'s
terms, as a prisoner in 1975. Over the years, Cleaver's political views had become conservative, a turn he attributed, in
part, to his disillusionment with life in communist countries. In addition, while he was in France, Cleaver claims to have
had a mystical vision, in which he saw the face of Christ in the moon. The vision laid the foundation for his conversion experience.
Cleaver returned to the States born again, both as a Christian and as a conservative. Shortly after he arrived, he said, "I'd
rather be in jail in America than free anywhere else."
While in jail in 1976, Cleaver announced that he was a born again Christian and renounced the Marxism-Leninism and atheism
of his Black Panther days. After his release on bail he began a short career as leader of a religious revivalist movement,
the Eldridge Cleaver Crusades, which he founded in 1977. In 1978, Cleaver published a second memoir,
Soul on Fire. In 1980, Cleaver created a new church, a synthesis of Christianity and Islam he called Christlam. He also spoke at colleges
on behalf of Reverend Sun Myung Moon's campus ministry organization, the Collegiate Association of Research Principles (CARP).
A few years later, Cleaver became involved with the Mormon Church.
In 1980, the murder charges pending against Cleaver from the 1968 shootout were dropped and Cleaver was placed on probation
for assault and sentenced to twelve-hundred hours of community service.
Cleaver twice ran unsuccessfully for Congress in the 1980s. In 1984, he lost his race for a House seat to Oakland Congressman
Ron Dellums; in 1986, he ran in the Senate primary against incumbent, Alan Cranston, campaigning as a conservative Republican.
In the mid-1980s, Cleaver became addicted to crack cocaine. He was arrested several times for cocaine possession and related
charges, between 1987 and 1992. In 1987, Kathleen Cleaver divorced him. In 1994, after nearly dying in a cocaine-related assault,
he kicked his addiction and returned to Christianity. Cleaver was working as a diversity consultant for the University of
La Verne, near Los Angeles, when he died in Pomona, California on May 1, 1998.
Largely taken from entry on Eldridge Cleaver, Answers.com, West's Encyclopedia of American Law, The Gale Group, Inc, 1998.
http://www.answers.com/topic/eldridge-cleaver, accessed July 24, 2006.
Scope and Content of Collection
The Eldridge Cleaver papers document Cleaver's lifetime as an activist and writer. Dating from 1963-1988, the papers consist
of correspondence, writings, including manuscripts for his works
Soul on Ice and
Soul on Fire, and papers from his affiliation with the Black Panther Party as Minister of Information and as head of the International
Section during his exile. Also included are files of the Eldridge Cleaver Crusades, the Eldridge Cleaver Defense Committee,
and Cleaver for Congress. The bulk of the collection consists of legal files pertaining to the shootout with the Oakland Police
Department on April 6 1968.
The collection has been divided into nine series: Correspondence; Writings; Black Panther Party; Eldridge Cleaver Defense
Committee; Eldridge Cleaver Crusades; Organizations; Cleaver for Congress/ Cleaver for Senate; Legal Documents; and Personal
Documents.
Succinct series descriptions provide a basic outline of the records available. The researcher should consult the container
list to determine if the records contain a topic of interest as not all subjects are mentioned in these brief descriptions.