Conservatives Can’t Claim Cleaver

In July 1968, Black Panther Party leader Eldridge Cleaver spoke at a fund-raising rally in Los Angeles. His speech was defiant, brash, laced with profanities, filled with threats to kill the police. Along with other journalists, I talked with him afterward. He punctuated his answers to our questions about the Panther program with diatribes against the police and the political establishment. I wondered then how much of this he believed and how much was radical play-acting.

During the next few months, I heard Cleaver speak several times at Panther rallies. His line hadn’t changed. He still seemed to take special delight in choosing words that had maximum shock value. By then his reputation as a former street hustler, thief, rapist, drug dealer and ex-con stoked the fantasies of many white radicals who saw him as a black superrevolutionary avenger. And in a pique of radical chic, many whites in the literary establishment hailed his “Soul on Ice” as a literary masterpiece and proclaimed him the second coming of James Baldwin.

But Cleaver always seemed to be a breed apart from Panther cofounders Huey Newton and Bobby Seale. Despite some of their outlandish statements and actions, the bookish Newton and the community grounded Seale took time to articulate a vision of change and organize community self-help programs that eventually included free breakfast and free clothing programs and a voter registration campaign. Many politically moderate blacks and whites praised the Panthers for their efforts.

Cleaver, however, remained a prisoner of his tough guy image and a victim of his tough talk. He could not make the transition to effective community organizer. When he jumped bail and fled the country, following his arrest after a shoot-out with Oakland police, his revolutionary star rose even higher. From Algeria, Cuba, North Vietnam, the Soviet Union and China, Cleaver preached death and destruction for America.

When FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover called the Panthers “the greatest domestic threat to American security” and launched a secret counterintelligence campaign to neutralize them, this further puffed up the Panthers’ revolutionary allure. Exhilarated by that image, I went to several Panther meetings and became acquainted with Kathleen Cleaver, then Eldridge’s wife; Elaine Brown; Seale, and Geronimo Pratt. But even as I heard Panther leaders and followers speak Cleaver’s name reverentially, I doubted whether they really knew what he stood for.

In 1969, following a bitter political and personal dispute with Newton, Cleaver was booted out of the party. By the mid-1970s, the Panthers were a fading memory. Police attacks, jailings and self-destructive internal battles had taken a big toll. There were rumors--mostly true--that the Panther leaders were using and dealing drugs, had ordered members beaten, were extorting money from local business owners and had siphoned off Panther funds to support their own elegant lifestyles.

In 1975, bitter, disillusioned and largely forgotten, Cleaver returned to the United States, and after a drawn-out legal battle, he escaped prison. He then quickly delivered his mea culpas, denounced radicals and radicalism, flirted with the religious movement of the Rev. Sun Myung Moon and endorsed the 1984 reelection bid of Ronald Reagan.

Many people were shocked at his flip-flop. I wasn’t. Cleaver’s epiphany was no different from those of many former socialists, communists and 1960s radicals who had renounced their past, made their peace with the system and become passionate anti-communists or respected middle-aged liberals. But many of the ex-radicals had actually read Marx and Lenin and were fervent believers in radical change. With Cleaver, the question remains whether his turn marked a true conversion based on real belief or simply his unresolved political confusion.

That’s why it’s wrongheaded and self-serving for political conservatives to say that Cleaver finally got it right. They don’t know who he was or what he stood for any better than the Panthers did. The best that can be said is that Cleaver, perhaps more than any other, embodied the jumble of idealism, befuddlement, heroism and tragedy that still make the Panthers the stuff of legend--and myth.