In 1958, Cleaver was put behind bars once more, this time for assault.

He felt that his rapes of white women were 'insurrectionary' rapes, justified by what African Americans had suffered under a system dominated by whites. After his release in 1957, he raped an unknown number of women, both black and white. In 1954, Cleaver was sent to prison for possession of marijuana.ĭuring his incarceration, Cleaver began to develop his own political philosophy. He would return for a second stay for selling marijuana. Reform School and PrisonĪs a teenager, Cleaver was charged with stealing a bicycle and sent to reform school. Soon after a move to Los Angeles, California, his father left the family. Growing up, Cleaver witnessed his father beating his mother. Leroy Eldridge Cleaver was born on August 31, 1935, in Wabbaseka, Arkansas. Cleaver was 62 when he died in Pomona, California, on May 1, 1998. In 1968, he fled the country to avoid a return to prison.

Freed on parole, he joined the Black Panthers and published his prison essays in Soul on Ice. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.Eldridge Cleaver spent much of his youth in reform school and prisons in California. Cleaver writes in Soul on Ice, '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.' What Cleaver shows us, on the pages of this now classic autobiography, is how much he was a man. By turns shocking and lyrical, unblinking and raw, the searingly honest memoirs of Eldridge Cleaver are a testament to his unique place in American history. The now-classic memoir that shocked, outraged, and ultimately changed the way America looked at the civil rights movement and the black experience. Cleaver writes in Soul on Ice, ' 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.' What Cleaver shows us, on the pages of this now classic autobiography, is how much he was a man.

Soul on ice author cleaver