Eldridge Cleaver, the fiery Black Panther leader and literary voice of the Black Power movement who later renounced his past and became a Republican, died Friday. He was 62.
Cleaver died at Pomona Valley Hospital Medical Center outside Los Angeles. The cause of death was withheld at his family's request, hospital spokeswoman Leslie Porras said.At times a convict, political candidate, environmentalist and author, Cleaver was a major figure in the turbulent civil rights era of the 1960s. He was one of the original Black Panthers, formed in 1966 in Oakland by Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale.
His prison-written essays on race, love and revolutionary violence, published in the book "Soul on Ice" in 1968, became the philosophical foundation of the Black Power movement.
In one essay, Cleaver described his rape of white women as "an insurrectionary act. It delighted me that I was defying and trampling upon the white man's law . . . defiling his women. . . . I wanted to send waves of consternation through the white race."
Cleaver ran unsuccessfully for president in 1968 on the Peace and Freedom Party ticket. Following his campaign, he was ousted from the Panthers because of a bitter and public dispute with Newton.
He fled the country after a shootout with police in 1968. After returning to the United States in 1975, Cleaver denounced the Black Panthers and embraced anti-communism.
He had more brushes with the police in drug and burglary cases, ran a recycling pickup service and, most recently, worked as a consultant to a diversity task force at the University of LaVerne, 30 miles east of Los Angeles.
"He was a gentle spirit. His presence of nonconformity was still there and he was his own person," said Richard Rose, a professor of religion and philosophy who worked with Cleaver at the University of LaVerne.
"He wasn't regretful about any of the things he had done, but he said he'd made a mistake in some of the tactics he had used to accomplish his objectives."
David Hilliard, a former Black Panther Party chief of staff, said: "The community should remember Eldridge as being a liberator, an activist, someone who cared very dearly about African-Americans and the struggle for human rights."
In a 1986 interview with The Associated Press, he said, "Everybody changes, not just me. I was pulled over in my car with my secretary for a traffic thing and one of the officers walked up to the car, and saw me sitting inside. He took off his hat and said, `Hey, Eldridge, remember me?"'
"He used to be a Panther," Cleaver explained. "It was hard to believe."
Cleaver was the fledgling Black Panther Party's information minister when he was involved in a gun battle with Oakland police in 1968. Panther treasurer Bobby Hutton, 17, was killed and Cleaver and two police officers were wounded.
Cleaver was arrested after the shootout but jumped bail and spent seven years in Cuba, Algeria, the Soviet Union, France and elsewhere.
Prior to his return to the United States, Cleaver told reporters he believed he would be treated fairly.