Description:

Eldridge Cleaver
n.p., n.d.
Superb and Revealing Eldridge Cleaver Diary Entry ca. 1975: "The Communists…took from the rich and from the poor…and kept it all for themselves…"
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A rare, fine content autograph manuscript signed "Robin Hood", one page, 5" x 7", [n.p., n.d. but ca. 1975], in pencil and taken from a diary. Offered with an unused, red and blue "Cleaver for Congress" envelope, business-size of 9.5" x 4", with a label addressed to Harry Lucas in Houston, Texas. Both items are in near fine condition.

Cleaver writes at the height of his disillusionment with Communism, in full: "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."

This entry was penned around the time that Cleaver was returning from a 7-year 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. However, the hospitality ended when Castro felt he could not longer trust them, having received information that the CIA had infiltrated the Black Panther Party.

As a fugitive, Cleaver lived in Algeria, Cuba and France, and made trips to North Vietnam, North Korea and the Soviet Union. He was wined and dined by the Communists; however the royal treatment had the unintended consequence of turning Cleaver off to Communism. While in these countries Cleaver began to see a side of the Communist state that was consistently downplayed by its ideological proponents: crushing poverty and lack of basic freedoms. These countries did not offer the paradisiac communes of workers in control of the means of production, but rather were exemplars of a system of slavery, with free speech removed for anyone who dared to demonstrate for improvement in living conditions or other basic needs.

Cleaver became wholly 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 that Cleaver had a vision bordering on hallucination, watching a parade of his former communistic heroes pass before his eyes with the dazzling image of Jesus Christ at the end. Cleaver remembered the sermons of his Baptist minister grandfather and, shaking and terrified, fell to his knees and begged Jesus' forgiveness. The next morning, Cleaver got in touch with the FBI and said he wanted to come home. He was ready to stand trial and to accept whatever judgment would follow.

During his epiphany about the dark sides 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 was a rosy picture [from] the government and a picture of misery and dejection from the point of view of the people...".

Eldridge Cleaver (1931-1998) was a leader of the Black Panthers who, because of his many crimes, was often in prison. It was there that he wrote his influential manifesto, "Soul on Ice," a commentary on prison life and racism in America which became an international best-seller and was the manifesto of the Black Nationalist Movement. 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.

Today, more than 25 years after his death, Cleaver's philosophical quotes are still in frequent use by politicians, businesses, philosophers and activists. Some of the more apropos include: "The price of hating another human being is loving oneself less"; "You are either a part of the solution or a part of the problem"; "You do not need to teach people how to be human, you have to teach them how to stop being inhuman"; and "I feel that I am a citizen of the American dream and that the revolutionary struggle of which I am a part is a struggle against the American nightmare."

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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  • Dimensions: 5" x 7"
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