Eldridge Cleaver life and biography

Leroy Eldridge Cleaver better known as Eldridge Cleaver, was a leading member of the Black Panther Party, a self-confessed rapist, a convict, and a writer. His most famous book is Soul On Ice, a collection of essays praised by The New York Times Book Review at the time of its publication as "brilliant and revealing."

Eldridge Cleaver helped found the militant group the Black Panthers in 1966 and became famously controversial as the group's outspoken Minister of Information. His 1968 book Soul On Ice, based on essays he had written in prison years earlier, cemented Cleaver's reputation as a spokesman for Black Power. The same year he was wounded in a Panther shootout with Oakland police; Cleaver jumped bail, fled to Algeria and lived in exile there and in Paris. He returned to America in 1975. Paradoxically, in later years Cleaver renounced his former radical views, became a born-again Christian, embraced conservative political causes and even ran for political office as a Republican. He also suffered well-publicized struggles with drug addiction in the years before his death in 1998.

Cleaver described his religious and political conversions in a 1978 book, Soul on Fire.

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