Eldridge Cleaver (1935 – 1998) was the Minister of Information for the Black Panther Party and author of Soul on Ice (1968) and Soul on Fire (1975).
Cleaver believed that there were two critical issues in American, the war in Vietnam and the Negro revolution in America. He said “liberal-sounding, unenforced laws” had deceived black Americans. Also, that the black man’s future had no guarantee for safety. To guarantee safety, the reign of terror had to end. To ensure this guarantee black people had to develop an organizational unity.
Black Americans were fighting and challenging racial injustices for a second time in history. The first time was during the Reconstruction Period after the Civil War. The Reconstruction Period ended abruptly and brutally. Racial segregation was the remnant of Reconstruction. Cleaver stated, “It has taken a hundred years to struggle up from that level of cool-out to the miserable position that black Americans now find themselves in. Time is passing.
The Civil Rights Era was a time like no other. Cleaver mention that everyone was a rebellion, from the smallest man on the street, anyone black man, woman or child who had been denied their unalienable rights and who had been robbed of dignity and self-respect had to fight against the system of white supremacy. The time to act was NOW. The call of order was for the full proportional share and participation in the sovereignty of America.
Reconstruction was not going to come and go again. This time the black revolution was putting everything on the line. Black Americans took on the role of a Black Trojan Horse. Cleaver emulated Malcolm X’s decree that the American black man’s struggle had converted the original plea for “civil rights” to the universal demand for “human rights.”
Julian Bond brought leaders of Africa and black American together to reinvigorate Malcolm X’s epiphany of an Afro-American Unity Organization. Cleaver made claim that the U.S. sent 16% of black troops to Vietnam for two reasons: 1. To kill off the black youth and 2. To spread hate against the black race throughout Asia. He said other countries saw black Americans as fools to fight for something they don’t have themselves.
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