Black Panther ‘born-again’

Press, 11 August 1979, Page 17

Black Panther ‘born-again’

Soul on Fire. By Eldridge Cleaver. Hodder and Stoughton, 1979. 218 PP- $l5.

(Reviewed by Ralf Unger)

“I looked up at the moon and saw certain shadcrws . . . and the shadows became a man in the moon and I saw a profile of myself. ... As I stared at this image, it changed, and I saw my former heroes paraded before my eyes. Here were Fidel Castro, Mao Tse-Tung, Karl Marx. Frederick Engels, passing in revue. Finally, at the end of the procession, in dazzling, shimmering light, the image of Jesus Christ appeared. I fell to my knees.” Is a rapist, thug, hit-man, and a political agitator who has spent half his life in prison, having a psychotic episode because of the loneliness and depression of his life in banishment in Paris in the early 19705? The book does not give a completely satisfactory answer, but from this experience onwards the former Black Panther leader is a born-again Christian who voluntarily returns to the United States to face a charge of murder. Cleaver is one of an increasing group of youthful revolutionary leaders who are now testifying to the healing power of Christ in their lives. He reviews his life and world from a very tough background in the slums of Los Angeles with a family disrupted by a violent father and constant poverty, his graduation to major crimes of violence, blackmail and disregard for human feeling, and his conversion to the American Muslim and eventually the Panther movement.

The Panthers were a group of people similar to himself, full of anger and willing to use guns to project this,

with a flair for publicity in, for instance, occupying the Legislative Assembly in Sacramento while the law makers were in session. With the two principals imprisoned, Cleaver took over the planning and policy of the movement until, in 1968, at a shootout in Oakland he was arrested but managed to be spirited out of the country.

At slightly tedious length he discusses his dxile in Cuba and Algeria with’ quoted correspondence between himself and the various government officials, and his gradual disillusionment with the concept Of a world revolution. It is little wonder that, even in the company of his wife and two children, in Paris he reached a point of despair with the apparent positive thrust of his radical zeal shattered.

This is an interesting, but incomplete biography of a man of action from an embittered minority group. It can be read in conjunction with his other books which outline the Panther philosphy far more clearly, particularly “Soul on Ice”, but nevertheless in itself leaves the reader puzzling about the similarity of conversions to different systems of belief, the normality or disturbance involved in them, and the delicate balance of the subsequent personality structure.

While thankful that such a volcano can be tamed in this way, one ponders whether some of the early Christian leaders, in particular,,, did not have similar features. One can mourn, just a little, that rapid changes in the world, such as the improved conditions of Blacks in America, so soon become absorbed into White, conservative, middle-class structures.