Black Militant Leaders Quiet

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31866, 19 December 1968, Page 23

Black Militant Leaders Quiet

(N Z P.A 'Reuter—Copyright) NEW YORK, December 17. America’s black militant movement resembles a ship without a captain as the result of the self-removal from public exposure of two of its most colourful leaders, Eldridge Cleaver and Stokely Carmichael.

Many followers of the Black Power movement approve because of its avowed aim to achieve a revolution based on ideas rather than personalities.

Cleaver, a leader of the Black Panther Party, is a fugitive being sought for a parole violation, he vanished from San Francisco late in November and his hunters have still not picked up his trail. Carmichael, aged 27, the Black Panthers’ Trinidad-born “prime minister,” is trying to avoid publicity, according to well-informed Negro sources. H. Rap Brown, a long-time associate of Carmichael, says “our movement should be built on ideas, not on men. Men die, ideas live on.” One theory on Cleaver’s whereabouts is that he fled to New York with Cuba as his goal. Carmichael, who is under almost constant police surveillance, made a recent speech to a black audience in Atlanta, and travels between his Washington home and the Panthers’ California headquarters. Cleaver, who wears a trim beard and moustache ringing his mouth, had vowed he would not voluntarily return to prison to serve the remaining five years of a 13-year rape sentence. He was ordered back behind bars as a parole violator after a shooting last April between police and Panthers. In prison, he contemplated the sexual and social status of the American Negro male and poured out his conclusions in the widely-read book “Soul on Ice.” “We shall have our manhood,” he wrote, “we shall have it or the earth will be levelled by our attempts to gain it.” Cleaver insisted he did not hate white youth—as distinct from the white establishment. He began classifying people by age rather than colour: to be white and older than 35 was to be guilty—to be black and over 35 was to have collaborated with the guilty. Cleaver was gaoled on the rape charge in 1958. He was paroled in 1966 and has been fighting a legal battle to remain free ever since the April gun battle, when his parole

[was revoked. If he is caught, he will have to face trial on [attempted murder charges | stemming from the Panther- [ police confrontation. Carmichael recently told a Negro-owned newspaper that he was working quietly these days organising "for what we're going to have to face in the next five years.” He denied a recent report that he might be moving to Guinea with his wife, the South African singer, Miriam Makeba. Carmichael's “quiet” contrasts with his past violent speeches. In January, 1967, Carmichael said he wanted to concentrate on civil rights field work in the South. Seven months later, he made a five-month tour of Tanzania, Egypt, Sweden, Spain, England, Algeria, France, Guinea, Cuba and North Vietnam. His visits to Havana and Hanoi cost him his passport as he had gone there without the required Government authorisation.