Black Power- Eldridge Cleaver

The black power movement, a new burst of African American activism that emerged in the late 1960s, has some intriguing links to Arkansas. Eldridge Cleaver, a member of the Oakland, California-based Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, was born in Wabbaseka, in Jefferson County, Arkansas. He moved to California in the early 1940s where he led a troubled life that led to several arrests and prison sentences. In the early 1960s he joined the Black Muslims and then wrote for the New Left Ramparts magazine. It was as a staff writer at Ramparts that Cleaver met Black Panther Party founders Bobby Seale and Huey Newton. Cleaver became Black Panther Party Minister of Information, editor of its newspaper, and his book Soul on Ice remains one of the classic philosophical and political tracts of the black power era. I’m John Kirk of the UALR History Department and this has been an Arkansas moment.