Eldridge Cleaver: Blackness

Eldridge Cleaver was American activist. Explore interesting quotes on blackness.
Eldridge Cleaver: 42 quotes0 likes

“They were murderers and they still are, but policemen are like dogs on a leash.… The police function under political direction. They go after whoever they are sent after, and that's where the problem comes in.… Black people were moving out of their traditional position in America. Nobody knew what to do about it. The white politicians were confused, the blacks were confused.… the police were told to go out, stop those civil-rights marches … and they went out and did that. When you talk to police now who participated in that, you find out that they were in the same position we were in — just trying to find the right formula.”

Eldridge Cleaver

Interview by Reason magazine (1986)
1980s

“Malcolm X had a special meaning for black convicts. A former prisoner himself, he had risen from the lowest depths to great heights. For this reason he was a stmbol of hope, a model for thousands of black convicts who found themselves trapped in the vicious PPP cycle: prison-parole-prison.”

Eldridge Cleaver

"Initial Reactions on the Assassination of Malcolm X"
1960s, Soul on Ice (1968)

“Huey P. Newton is the baddest motherfucker ever to set foot inside of history. Huey has a very special meaning to black people, because for four hundred years black people have been wanting to do exactly what Huey Newton did, that is, to stand up in front of the most deadly tentacle of the white racist power structure, and to defy that deadly tentacle, and to tell that tentacle that he will not accept the aggression and the brutality, and that if he is moved against, he will retaliate in kind. Huey Newton is a classical revolutionary figure.”

Eldridge Cleaver

Post-Prison Writings (1969)
1960s