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Lot 44
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Eldridge Cleaver c. 1975 revealing diary entry noting: "The communist take from the Rich and The Poor, in the name of the poor ... "
Eldridge Cleaver c. 1975 revealing diary entry noting: "The communist take from the Rich and The Poor, in the name of the poor ... "
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Description:

Cleaver Eldridge

Single page of notes written in a diary, c1975, 5" x 7", boldly scripted in graphite entirely in the hand of Eldridge Cleaver, and signed as "Robin Hood". Near fine with a small newspaper clip, and accompanied by an near fine unused, but addressed envelope, with the printed return address of "Cleaver for Congress …", and embellished with a US flag, 9.5" x 4".

A scarce page of notes scripted entirely in the hand of Eldridge Cleaver. Composed circa 1975/76 around the time Cleaver was returning from 7 years of self imposed exile as a fugitive as a result of jumping bail in 1968 when he was facing charges of attempted murder. His seven exiled years first brought him to Cuba where he received red-carpet treatment. Cleaver was set up in a Havana penthouse with his own personal maid and cook, then when the hospitality soon ended (Having received information that the CIA had infiltrated the Black Panther Party,) Castro could no longer trust them.

As a fugitive he lived in Algeria, Cuba and France, and made trips to North Vietnam, North Korea and the Soviet Union. Everywhere he was wined and dined by the Communists. However, while in these countries Cleaver began to see that they were not “workers’ paradises” as he had been led to believe. He saw the bone-crushing poverty. He saw that people had no freedom of speech whatsoever. They were, for all practical purposes, SLAVES. Those who dared to demonstrate for more money and better living conditions were mowed down. Cleaver became disillusioned with Marxist-Leninist-Socialism. Realizing that everything he had believed in and fought for was false, he suffered a nervous breakdown while in Paris and was on the brink of suicide. In was then he had his vision bordering on hallucination, watching what were his former communistic heroes pass before his eyes. In his state of utter disillusionment he saw at the end of the procession, in dazzling, shimmering white light, the image of Jesus Christ appeared. Cleaver remembered the sermons of his Baptist minister grandfather, and trembling, frightened and sobbing, he repeated what he could remember of the Lord’s Prayer and the Twenty Third Psalm. He fell to his knees and asked Jesus to forgive him and to become his Lord and Savior. The next morning, he saw a path of light all the way to America, going through a prison cell. He got in touch with the FBI and said he wanted to come home and he was ready to stand trial and accept whatever judgment the law decided he owed society in order to reinstate himself and to erase his criminal past.

These phenomenal handwritten notes were composed at the very climax of his disillusionment Communism. During his epiphany of the communistic state Cleaver had said "I visited these communist and revolutionary countries to study their development plans (and) to examine how the people felt about the government and how the government treated the people … There were always two sides - the government's and the peoples. There was a rosy picture (from) the government and a picture of misery and dejection from the point of view of the people"

His incredibly scripted notes which he signs as "Robin Hood" are shown in full below:

"The Communists say they are out to take from the rich and give to the poor. They took from the rich and from the poor - in the name of the poor - and kept it all for themselves.

Robin Hood"

A fantastic, scarce, and highly revealing autographed page by Eldridge Cleaver during a highly charged period of our recent history.

Eldridge Cleaver was a leader of the Black Panthers who, because of his many crimes, was often in prison where he wrote “Soul on Ice”, a commentary on prison life and racism in America which became an international best-seller and was basically the “manifesto” of the Black Nationalist Movement in America and abroad. In “Soul on Ice” Cleaver described his metamorphosis from rapist and drug-dealer to Malcolm X apostle to Marxist revolutionary, who became, virtually overnight, one of the leading exponents of “black liberation” in America.



This item comes with a Certificate from John Reznikoff, a premier authenticator for both major 3rd party authentication services, PSA and JSA (James Spence Authentications), as well as numerous auction houses.

 

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