The Remaking of Eldridge Cleaver

The story Eldridge Cleaver's transformation from radical Black Panther to conservative, born-again Christian followed the typical conversion narratives of many white Protestant leaders in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Cleaver and the fellow crusaders who touted his conversion tell a story of a hypermasculine wayward black radical, transformed and set on a quest by God to revolutionize the world under the banner of Christ and conservatism. On November 19, 1975, a day after his return to the United States, Eldridge Cleaver arrived in San Diego to await trial for the charges stemming from the 1968 shootout with Oakland police. In addition to the 1968 charges, Cleaver faced a host of other charges after seven years plotting to topple the U.S. government. Cleaver later told crusade audiences that, while in jail, “One day this black preacher, an ex-militant who found the Lord, came to visit me.” In November 1975, Cleaver had not told a single person, including his spouse, Kathleen, of his religious experience in the south of France. The preacher came to him and said, “Eldridge, this is Jesus Christ; Jesus Christ, this is Eldridge Cleaver.” Cleaver was offended by the “ex-militant's” remarks. “Where did this man get this presumptuousness to introduce me to Jesus?” Cleaver asked an audience in Naples, Florida. He never saw the preacher again. Soon after, Cleaver was transferred to the Alameda County Jail in Oakland, yet to speak a word about what he saw in the moon months before.Footnote ¹¹

Awaiting trial in the Alameda County Jail, Cleaver met “a troop of three people who called themselves the ‘God Squad.’” The God Squad was an evangelical prison ministry that led weekly Christian worship services and Bible studies inside the county jail. The God Squad, like other evangelical prison ministries, believed that inmates could be fully rehabilitated through a “personal relationship with Jesus Christ.” These prison ministries enacted a “colorblind Christianity” that sought to remake inmates of color in the image of white evangelicalism. In many ways, these ministries were the natural product of twentieth-century conservatism and a crusade against communism. The prison ministries were the expression of the crusade in the prison system, a place that many evangelicals saw Christianity and capitalism directly threatened by the growth of Black Nationalist groups.Footnote ¹²

In the mid-twentieth century, Black Nationalist groups proliferated in American prison systems. Anticommunist crusaders saw this development as a direct assault on Christianity inside the prison and as a ticking time bomb waiting to explode as inmates were reintroduced into society. To combat the growth of these perceived anti-Christian, militant, communist, liberal, atheistic Black Nationalist groups, crusading prison ministries sought to fight back against the encroachment of the work of Satan in America's prisons. Those consumed by the crusade for Christ and against all things un-American believed that, if the Nation of Islam, Black Israelites, the Black Guerilla Family, or even the Black Panthers were making inroads with the prison system, then a significant Christian response was necessary. In the process, evangelical prison ministries sought to transform the souls of prisoners and strip them of their blackness through the rhetorical milieu of color-blindness. Under the guise of color-blindness, Christian conservatives positioned their religious movement as reputable and racially moderate. In doing so, they helped do the same for the cause of punishment—bolstering the justice system's claims to neutrality and its insistence that punishment could be color-blind even as it increasingly incarcerated people of color. Cleaver saw this dynamic at work, commenting that these ministries only existed to police the conduct of incarcerated black men.

As Cleaver observed the God Squad in the Alameda County Jail, he kept his distance. They “would join hands, close their eyes and say a little prayer.” “I couldn't get all hung up on that,” Cleaver said, “I wasn't particularly fond of closing my eyes around the people who were in the tank.” Cleaver could not trust a white man looking to save his soul while imprisoning his mind and body. He told an audience in Milwaukee that something kept bothering him about the group. Regardless of his numerous attempts to convince the God Squad that their Bible studies and prayer circles were merely an extension of American empire, they refused to abandon the project of converting the Black Panther Party Minister of Information. “Finally, I went and sat down,” Cleaver said. Cleaver told students at Iona College, a Roman Catholic institution in New York, that, through the leadership of the God Squad, he realized “there was a vacuum within me, a gulf, that had to be filled . . . that could only be filled by God through his Son Jesus Christ.” Middle-class white audiences filled auditoriums and meeting halls with loud applause for Cleaver's decision and the efforts of the God Squad.Footnote ¹³

While the God Squad worked on Cleaver inside the Alameda County Jail, others went to work for him on the outside. Coordinated by Kathleen Cleaver, the Eldridge Cleaver Defense Fund helped provide legal support as Cleaver faced his handful of charges. On Thursday, July 22, 1976, the Eldridge Cleaver Defense Fund organized a press conference “to express community support for Eldridge Cleaver's immediate release from jail.” The press conference included printed information (a press release, background information on Cleaver's hearing, and assorted statements of local and national support) and a lineup of influential speakers calling for Cleaver's freedom.Footnote ¹⁴

Speakers at the Cleaver Defense Fund press conference included Willie Brown, member of the California State assembly and future mayor of San Francisco; Cecil Williams, activist and pastor of Glide Memorial United Methodist Church in San Francisco; Willie Holder, president of the Prisoner's Union; and Jim Jones, founder of the People's Temple. Speaking at the press conference, Cecil Williams made an appeal “to the black community, the community at large, and ‘all those struggling for change to fight for equity in the courts.’” Jim Jones, “a heavy contributor to the Eldridge Cleaver Defense Fund,” said, “We feel that such support must be given irrespective of whether a person is black or white, liberal or conservative, religious or atheistic.” Jones continued, “Just because Eldridge Cleaver is now supporting American policies does not mean there has been a change in the conditions of harassment of his former social and political views. . . . [H]e is quite capable of being trusted free of custody.” The next day, Cleaver unsuccessfully petitioned for release.Footnote ¹⁵

Behind the bars of the Alameda County Jail, those wishing to rehabilitate the former Black Panther through the belief and practice of Christianity wasted no time. “I had a little skepticism about some of these preachers and some of the people that claimed to be followers of Jesus Christ,” Cleaver said of those wishing to share the gospel with him after his return to the United States. After a Los Angeles Times reporter discovered that Cleaver was participating in Christian meetings, the Times reported that “Charles Colson, Charles Manson, and Eldridge Cleaver Turned to Jesus Christ.” “The article mocked me,” Cleaver said. His attorney believed the article was the worst thing that could happen to Cleaver's case for release and those who supported the Eldridge Cleaver Defense Fund. “This is the last nail in your coffin. No one will try to help you with this stuff going on,” Cleaver's attorney told him. Following the release of the Times article, Cleaver realized that his “old friends, the Communists, the Black Panther Party members,” and those who once locked arms as champions of liberation, would abandon him.Footnote ¹⁶

While living in France in 1975, Cleaver had sought assistance from the Black Panther Party in his return to the United States. One Panther official reportedly told Cleaver, “You might as well forget it. . . . You might as well learn how to speak French and become a black Frenchman because they are not going to help you get back because they don't want you to come back.” The Black Panther Party had drastically changed since Cleaver's departure in 1968 and to welcome him back might have caused unwelcome attention as the Panthers were working to claim victories at the ballot box and combat FBI interference. Kathleen Cleaver wrote to popular black media outlets, pleading with editorial staff and readers to “put aside any political differences” with Cleaver and defend the “right to express unpopular ideas.” After Cleaver's conversion, however, the split between Cleaver and the Black Panther Party was clear. By February 1976, Cleaver's identity as a black radical revolutionary was crumbling. Writing for Ebony magazine, Alex Poinsett asked, “What happened to the black revolutionaries?” Poinsett wrote, “Cleaver expressed ideas that sparked many of the revolutionaries of the 1960s and early 1970s. . . . However, after seven years of self-imposed exile he returned to the U.S. articulating a fervent new-found belief in the America system.” Poinsett recalled that “Cleaver and the Black Panthers were the swaggering superstars of the radical movement.” According to Poinsett, efforts by the police and the FBI, as well as Eldridge Cleaver's new life, destroyed a once “burgeoning revolutionary movement.” Cleaver was no longer a “revolutionist in the cause of Black liberation.” Jet magazine noted that Cleaver faced opposition “when he began stomping the country in the name of the Lord and now, well, Cleaver disdains: ‘Some people won't even talk to me.’” Eldridge Cleaver felt that he was cut off from the revolution and left to fade away, embarrassed and forgotten.Footnote ¹⁷

The Los Angeles Times article, however mocking of Cleaver and detrimental to his outside support, caught the attention of insurance mogul and evangelical financier Arthur S. DeMoss. DeMoss had established a reputation in Albany, New York, as a successful “bookie,” operating two profitable “horse rooms” at the age of twenty-four.Footnote ¹⁸ In 1951, DeMoss had attended a tent revival where he was converted to Christianity and decided he was going to give his life to full-time Christian service. DeMoss retired from his horse-betting business and started selling insurance. In his early days as an insurance salesman, DeMoss specifically targeted conservative Christian communities, believing that their clean living and pious lifestyle would make them profitable clients. President and chairman of the life insurance company National Liberty Corporation, DeMoss pioneered a number of mass-marketing policies via direct mail and television advertisements.

Philadelphia-area minister Tony Campolo served as DeMoss's pastor until DeMoss's passing in 1979. Campolo recalled that DeMoss believed that his divine calling was to “make a huge amount of money to support missionaries.” By the time of his death, DeMoss was worth more than half a billion dollars and gave over $200 million in contributions to evangelical individuals and organizations. From the grave, DeMoss fulfilled his calling to support missionaries of crusading Christian conservatism. The DeMoss fortune was used to fund campaigns that opposed abortion and marriage equality while supporting abstinence, Jerry Falwell's Liberty University, Pat Robertson's American Center for Law and Justice, and Newt Gingrich's political action group GOPAC.Footnote ¹⁹

In 1976, Arthur S. DeMoss paid Cleaver a visit at the Alameda County Jail. Though Cleaver had no idea who he was, Cleaver believed that DeMoss, whom he called a “born-again gambler,” was “God's intervention.” According to Cleaver, DeMoss read an article in the Los Angeles Times that described a series of evangelical revivals taking place in prisons across California. After reading the article, “Art felt impressed to contact me,” Cleaver wrote in his memoir Soul on Fire, a book published by the DeMoss-funded Word Books and for sale at all Eldridge Cleaver Crusade events. After an exchange of letters, DeMoss requested to meet with Cleaver. Cleaver confessed, “all sorts of kooks were trying to get to me, not to mention the constant efforts of the FBI to question me, so I had developed an excessively defensive attitude toward anyone who wanted to see me.” After DeMoss and Cleaver's visit, Cleaver's “legal maze” unraveled, and he was released from jail free of charges on Friday, August 13, 1976.Footnote ²⁰

Free from prison and abandoned by his former Panther and liberationist comrades, Cleaver reflected on his newfound friendship: “Art wasn't betting on me; he was betting on the Lord and the power of the gospel to change a man.”Footnote ²¹ DeMoss put Cleaver in contact with conservative evangelists, politicians, and businessmen who saw an opportunity to protect their interests through the use of a born-again Black Panther, a black body remade in the crusade against communism and ready to fight for a Christian America. By the end of 1976, DeMoss provided the necessary capital to fund the Eldridge Cleaver Crusades, a ministry that told the story of how God overcame radicalism, Marxism, and satanic communism in one man, reborn.

Writing to Art DeMoss shortly after Cleaver's release from prison, a close friend was delighted to learn that the former Black Panther, Eldridge Cleaver, was delivered over to Christ and conservatism. “Praise the Lord!” he wrote, “The Cleaver decision is the work of the Holy Spirit. . . . I suspect that this may now open the way for Eldridge to really become the kind of disciple that God has chose him to be. Hallelujah!” Through DeMoss, Cleaver was introduced to President Nixon's “hatchet man,” the “evil genius” turned born-again Christian, Charles W. “Chuck” Colson. Shortly after Cleaver was released from prison, DeMoss arranged a meeting between Cleaver, Chuck Colson, Senator Harold Hughes, and former Alabama Ku Klux Klan leader Tommy Terrants. “I'm sure the angels in heaven rejoiced to see such a disparate group as this praying together and loving each other—because Jesus Christ had melded them together,” DeMoss remarked. The crusade that produced Cleaver united disparate persons in service to networks of conservative power, concealed in the Christian appeals to the sanctity of the American family, Christian citizenship, and “God's plan” for America.Footnote ²²

With the narrative strength of his own conversion already public, Chuck Colson saw in Cleaver an opportunity to broaden the appeal of born-again conservative politics. The conversion of a black Marxist to conservative Christianity was an “ace in the hole” for Colson's new project. Colson served as a crusade mentor to Cleaver beginning in 1976. Utilizing his staff and resources at Prison Fellowship, Colson advised Cleaver on everything from finances and crusade planning to techniques on how to appeal to white, middle-class audiences. Colson and his Prison Fellowship helped fund the Eldridge Cleaver Crusades and coordinated additional funding from the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association (BGEA), World Vision, Christian Broadcast, Gospel Films, and other conservative networks. Through careful mentorship, Colson believed that Cleaver could become a champion for Christ and against the “threats of liberalism, communism, Marxism, and Satanism” that were destroying the American dream.Footnote ²³ The crusade tangled Colson and Cleaver, bringing them to the center of a new expression of a color-blind crusade for Christ.

Less than two days after Cleaver's release from the Alameda County Jail, Arthur DeMoss arranged for him to visit Billy Graham at his San Diego crusade. Cleaver was “keeping in touch with Art DeMoss daily by telephone,” offering Art a detailed recounting of his activities.Footnote ²⁴ DeMoss, a major Graham contributor, received word from Ken Overstreet that Billy Graham wanted a meeting arranged with Cleaver. In San Diego, Cleaver spoke for two hours with Graham's associate Leighton Ford, recounting his newly public conversion experience. After the close of the San Diego crusade, arrangements were made for Cleaver to meet with Graham in his room at the Marriot Hotel near the Los Angeles International Airport. “Here I was about to meet a man I had actually hated most of my life,” Cleaver recalled of his meeting with Graham. For more than an hour, Cleaver and Graham “talked and prayed together.” Writing in Soul on Fire, Cleaver recalled that Graham gave him a piece of advice: “Eldridge, one thing you must never forget—never embarrass the Lord.”Footnote ²⁵ Graham wanted Cleaver to know that his conduct was being surveilled and policed and that, in order for him to survive in the world of American Christian conservatism, he had to behave.

As long as Cleaver was on his best behavior, measuring his words and proclaiming Christ and anticommunism, the BGEA would fund his endeavors to crusade against his former life. Early in his crusade ministry, Cleaver received assurance from his mentor, Chuck Colson. “I am sure that the Billy Graham Association will make a substantial contribution to help get your foundation off the ground,” Colson wrote. Not only was Colson confident that the BGEA would fund his crusades, but he also received word that Graham tapped Robert Pierce to offer Cleaver the full resources of the missionary service organization World Vision, giving the Eldridge Cleaver Crusades a global reach. George Wilson, whom Billy Graham credited with growing the BGEA into one of the world's largest charitable organizations, worked closely with Cleaver. Wilson helped Cleaver negotiate book deals and film productions and connected him to the Graham network of conservative capitalists and cultural power brokers. With the funding of the Graham empire, Eldridge Cleaver Crusades was poised to speak out against the ills of Marxist communism, “conspiracies of racial reconciliation,” the evils of “feminism that threatened the American family,” and a host of other issues at the core of the conservative crusade.Footnote ²⁶

In a later visit with Billy Graham, Graham told Cleaver that Graham's wife, Ruth, kept a picture of Cleaver on her wall and had prayed for him well before his conversion to Christianity. Graham was signaling to Cleaver that Ruth was faithful in her role within the Graham crusade. According to Cleaver, Ruth often wrote to him, providing scripture and words of encouragement while he traveled the country on his crusade tour. Speaking to a large audience at the Valley Forge Music Fair on November 14, 1977, an event sponsored by Art DeMoss's Philadelphia Christian Men's Club, Cleaver said that Ruth Graham was the model Christian woman. Cleaver explained that a Christian man needed a Christian woman by his side to provide essential support inside and outside the home. Kathleen was his Ruth, and the men in attendance needed to find a “suitable mate” to help them in their “belief in Jesus Christ.” Writing in 1978, Cleaver told followers that the Grahams were “a tremendous help” in supporting him as he conducted crusades.Footnote ²⁷

Art DeMoss, Chuck Colson, and Billy Graham were not alone in their support of the born-again Black Panther. At the November 14, 1977, gathering of the Philadelphia Christian Men's Club in Devon, Pennsylvania, a host of investors saw that Cleaver's message of Christian conservatism and anticommunism was well worth supporting. Christian businessmen were asked to pray for the meeting, “that the Holy Spirit will open many hearts on November 14 to accept Jesus as personal Lord and Savior.” Philadelphia businessmen saw a Cleaver crusade as an opportunity to share their brand of Christian political, economic, racial, and social platforms with “friends, relatives, co-workers, neighbors and fellow church members.” Among those Philadelphia capitalists funding Cleaver crusades were Heisman Trophy winner and co-founder of Gino's Hamburgers Alan Ameche; Judge Raymond J. Broderick of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern Division of Pennsylvania; Wilson O. Green of the Lee Tire and Rubber Company, who had deep ties to the Detroit auto industry; U.S. Army Lieutenant General Willard Pearson; and Pat Williams, the general manager of the Philadelphia 76ers. These individuals made up Arthur DeMoss's Philadelphia Christian Men's Club Board of Advisors, which was responsible for coordinating mutual investments in Christian ministries that served their nondenominational vision for “Christian Outreach.”Footnote ²⁸ The Philadelphia Christian Men's Club funded Cleaver throughout his career.

Through his relationships with Art DeMoss, Billy Graham, and Chuck Colson, Cleaver was introduced to the former governor of and then-current U.S. Senator from Iowa Harold E. Hughes. Hughes immediately became a type of “political prayer partner” for Cleaver.Footnote ²⁹ Hughes and Cleaver would often meet to pray and discuss strategies to extend his influence in the political world. In one conversation, Hughes told Cleaver that he was praying that the Lord might use him to “bring others over from darkness and into the light of Christianity,” following Cleaver's own conversion in 1975. Hughes believed that Cleaver's crusade could capture the hearts and minds of even the most vicious of Republicans and Democrats.Footnote ³⁰ Hughes served on the Eldridge Cleaver Crusades advisory council, offering advice on “spiritual matters,” finance, organizational oversight, and guidance for his Republican congressional campaigns in the 1980s. Though Hughes remained a Democrat until his death in 1996, he saw in Cleaver an opportunity to “move more people” to the gospel of Jesus Christ and away from the ills that plagued the great society that he had once strived to build in Washington, D.C.

Another member of the unofficial council who helped direct the Eldridge Cleaver Crusades was popular entertainer Pat Boone. While Boone did not come to the aid of Cleaver's political aspirations, he pledged his public and financial support to the Eldridge Cleaver Crusades. The support of evangelicalism's “Crown Prince” was invaluable to the success of Cleaver's crusade. The endorsement of the all-American Pat Boone rendered the once-radical Eldridge Cleaver acceptable in white conservative circles. As Boone appeared on the crusade stage with Cleaver, white conservatives were willing to forget what Cleaver once told students at UCLA in 1968: “Fuck Ronald Reagan, fuck Ronald Reagan. . . . I say that Ronald Reagan is a punk, a sissy, and a coward . . . fuck him in his ass!”Footnote ³¹ Boone's endorsement repackaged Cleaver for the white, middle-class base of Christian conservatism, the very networks that made Boone into an evangelical celebrity.

Writing in a form letter to the Pat Boone mailing list, Boone assured his followers that Eldridge Cleaver was “authentic” in his crusade for Christ and against communism. Boone wrote, “Chuck Colson, Hal Lindsey, and others are convinced of Eldridge's conversion and want to help him.” Acknowledging an essential marker of entrance into Christian conservatism, Boone verified Cleaver's conversion. Boone wrote, “Eldridge Cleaver did accept Christ.” Like the vision of Jesus that cleansed Cleaver's soul on a balcony in the south of France, Boone's and others’ public support helped “sanitize” Cleaver's image, thus crafting the core of Cleaver's crusade.Footnote ³²

Two months after Cleaver's release from prison, Don Downing, of People magazine, asked Cleaver about his newly public conversion experience. “Would you describe yourself now as a born-again Christian?” Downing asked. Cleaver responded, “The label doesn't bother me. I just wish I could be born again every day.” Cleaver continued in the interview to discuss his denouncement of the Black Panther Party, disillusionment with communism, and his subsequent embrace of American conservatism. The former Black Panther, who once plotted the obliteration of America, who once spoke of rape as the ultimate form of protest against the white man, and Christianity as but a tool of capitalist imperialism, was now a born-again Christian. To conclude the interview, Downing asked Cleaver about his future. Downing inquired, “Are you going to undertake some sort of Christian activist crusade?” “I have no plans like that,” Cleaver said.Footnote ³³

His conversion experience having been made public via white conservatives funded by or connected to DeMoss, Cleaver was bombarded with questions about the authenticity of his religious experience and the denouncement of his former ideology. These criticisms were widespread, noting the obvious: Cleaver's crusade was radically different than his former life. For example, when speaking at the 1978 National Prayer Breakfast, Cleaver summoned a tenet of conservatism: opposition to autocratic authoritarianism, but only when it served the purposes of conservative discourse. A man, who for much of his life was defined by a rugged antiauthoritarian persona and was the target of state surveillance, spoke of the necessity of United States military prowess. Cleaver said, “I would hate to see a world in which the military power of the United States would leave the world under the control and boot of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact countries.”Footnote ³⁴ If critics were not questioning Cleaver before, they surely were after his full endorsement of the American military industrial complex.

Wrestling with claims of inauthenticity, Cleaver told an audience in Dublin, California, “I've been having some strange experiences with the news media on one hand and some of my old friends on the other.” They all asked similar questions. He told them, “Are you for real? Where are you coming from? What are you up to? Where are you going?” Cleaver was out to prove himself and the god that he claimed to serve. Cleaver told audiences that the media personnel assigned to cover his homecoming and conversion story could not prove him dishonest despite their best efforts. Three journalists from the New York Times interviewed Cleaver, each wanting to write an article on his former life, religious experience, and plans to undertake a national crusade tour. Cleaver said, “The first one was a Black man who goes to Yale University.” After submitting his article to the editor, it was rejected for being “too favorable.” “Then they got a white man to do the same thing,” Cleaver continued. “He wrote his article and they rejected it, saying it was too favorable.” The man that the Times got to write the article pieced together what Cleaver called a “hatchet job.”Footnote ³⁵ Cleaver claimed that, despite the attacks on his authenticity, he emerged from each assault stronger than before.

In addition to scrutiny from media outlets and former Black Panther comrades, Cleaver reported that he encountered deep skepticism on college campuses and in local churches. “They believe that Jesus Christ is for everybody except me,” Cleaver told one audience. He quipped that somewhere hidden in the scriptures was a verse that read, “Everyone can come to the Lord except Eldridge Cleaver.” Writing to Billy Zeoli, the self-proclaimed “godfather” of Gospel Films and friend of Art DeMoss, Cleaver confessed that many wished to see him fail in his new venture to crusade for Christ. Cleaver wrote, “The Lord is preparing my justification and a strong rebuke for all the prattlers and tattletales who sought a reason to revoke my Salvation (if they could!), to exile me from the Body of Christ. My exile is ended. I have a mansion in the Keep of Jesus Christ.” After 1976, Cleaver battled continuous commentary on his “religious authenticity,” many writing Cleaver off as an “opportunist, con-man, and lover of the limelight.”Footnote ³⁶

The Racial Remaking of Eldridge Cleaver and Crusading Christian Conservatism

By 1976, as Cleaver toured the country crusading for Christ and against communism, audiences were offered a range of Eldridge Cleaver publications and merchandise. Cleaver sold thousands of copies of his memoirs, including the incendiary and controversial 1968 Soul on Ice, to predominantly white, middle-class audiences. Soul on Ice, where Cleaver chronicles “protest rapes” and a life of crime, could very well have sat on the same conservative nightstand with My Utmost for His Highest or the latest Billy Graham devotional. The 1977 biography Eldridge Cleaver: Reborn, by John A. Oliver, played a vital role in presenting Cleaver's crusade to a conservative, white, middle-class audience. According to Cleaver, Oliver was a reporter who visited him regularly in the Alameda County Jail shortly after his return to the United States. Oliver was also a writer for the evangelical publisher Logos International. Cleaver said that Oliver would often “share the Gospel of Jesus Christ” and “do whatever he could to cheer me up.”Footnote ³⁷ Oliver played a vital role in remaking the image of Eldridge Cleaver, the born-again Black Panther.

Following news that Cleaver was now a born-again Christian, Oliver approached Cleaver with a proposal to write a biography. The biography would recount Cleaver's early political activity and ideology with an emphasis on just how radical Cleaver was. Offering readers an “inside look” at the tortured and conflicted life of Cleaver, Oliver concluded the biography by demonstrating how the power of God could transform a man who once “subscribed to the radicalism of the Nation of Islam,” talked about rape as an act of protest, and plotted to destroy America through Marxist revolution. Reframing the narratives Cleaver carried with him as a black man in America, Oliver told readers that Cleaver's story, while on the surface different from the majority white readership, was no different than anyone else's story. For Oliver, Cleaver was coming from the same place, the place of a sinner, but God saved him from leftist politics, Marxist ideology, sin, death, and the type of volatile blackness conservatives saw in the Black Panthers and civil rights movement.Footnote ³⁸

The new Eldridge Cleaver believed that he was saved both from the pits of hell and also from the blackness associated with African Americans who held political and religious beliefs different than white conservatives. Following his release from prison and negotiations with financiers and conservative powerhouses, Cleaver was instructed in every detail on how to market himself to a “respectable” audience. The first bit of advice that Cleaver received was to “tone it down.” At the request of both Billy Graham and Charles Colson, Cleaver was told that he needed to measure his speech, being careful not to speak in a manner that might remind audiences of the “old Eldridge.” Cleaver was long remembered as the passionate firebrand of the Black Panther Party, and conservatives desired a more subdued African-American crusader. He was advised to maintain a degree of decorum, avoiding slang or “regional euphemisms.” This advice was meant to extend beyond the crusade stage and into his private life, setting an example as the head of a Christian household.Footnote ³⁹

In addition to a more somber oration, Cleaver was advised to change his appearance. He could not be seen in clothing that mimicked the Black Panthers or those “volatile black figures that preached an anti-Christian message of racial division.” The crusade called for more than spiritual or ideological transformation. This bit of instruction meant retirement from Cleaver's brief career in the fashion industry. Shortly after Cleaver's release from prison, he had started a fashion company under the name Eldridge de Paris. Cleaver believed that, through fashion, he could help liberate American males from the constrictions of feminism. For Cleaver and other crusaders, feminism was part of Satan's blueprint that sought to destroy America through the emasculation of American men and boys. As one who exuded traditional masculinity and spoke of it at length in “White Woman, Black Man” in Soul on Ice, Cleaver believed that God called for the liberation of the soul and the male body.Footnote ⁴⁰

“You'll Be Cock of the Walk with the New Fall Collection from Eldridge de Paris,” read an advertisement for “Cleaver's Born-Again Menswear.” The high-waisted pants featured a side zipper and matching “appurtenance,” or external “penis sleeve,” that liberated the male form from the restrictions of regular pants. “They're bad, they're mean, they're up front (but not out of sight) . . . and, of course, they're for men only . . . real men . . . the three fisted kind,” the ad continued. “There is no mistaking they are men's pants,” said Cleaver. “We've been castrated in clothing. . . . I'm against penis binding,” he continued. Marketing the pants for men and boys of all ages, he struggled to make a sale but believed that the pants were a material representation of a liberated soul. Jet magazine, which once covered Cleaver's involvement with the Panthers, ran an article on Cleaver's “sexy pants” in 1978. Cleaver told Jet that he saw “no contradiction” between his Christian faith and the “Cleaver sleeve” appurtenance. “Can Cleaver possibly be serious about all this?” the Los Angeles Times asked about the pants. Serious or not, Cleaver's aspirations in the fashion industry were cause for alarm for the white conservatives who hoped to build Cleaver into a force for conservatism.Footnote ⁴¹

While Eldridge de Paris pants struggled to make inroads in the fashion industry, Charles Colson wrote to Cleaver about his pants, encouraging him to abandon the project and focus on crusading for Christ. After receiving pressure from Colson, Billy Graham, and others, Cleaver retired as a fashion designer. “I was delighted with the decision you made to abandon the pants project,” Chuck Colson wrote. “When word of that gets around, I am sure you are going to be substantially helped by the Christian community.”Footnote ⁴² Crusading across America, instead of wearing his “Cleaver sleeve” pants, Cleaver was seen in clothing similar to his white crusading counterparts—light-colored shirts and muted suits that seemed to hang loose on his athletic frame. Cleaver traded his iconic black leather jacket and turtleneck for a leisure suit, shaved his goatee down to a trim mustache, and cut his revolution-inspiring Afro to a short crew cut. He traded in soul food, combat boots, and Aretha Franklin for Twinkies, loafers, and the Bill Gaither Trio. Cleaver's dreams of black liberation were to be realized within the structures of his conservative crusade, cast in the image of an African American not too passionate, appropriately dressed, and respectable.

Speaking with Colson at a joint press conference in San Diego on February 25, 1977, Cleaver said, “I don't want to think anymore in terms of black freedom, brown freedom or white freedom. That's why Christianity is so powerful and such a wonderful solution to all our problems.” Summoning the core of Christian conservatism, Cleaver claimed that Christianity “abolishes the distinctions between sexes, races, classes, cliques, ethnic groups, and even nations.” Cleaver was “free,” and he gave his audiences the chance to join him in that freedom. Such freedom, however, came at a cost.Footnote ⁴³

At each speaking engagement, a well-known white, middle-class, conservative leader welcomed Cleaver to the platform, reading from a prepared introductory statement. Chuck Colson, Pat Robertson, Robert Shuler, Jerry Falwell, and hundreds of conservative leaders introduced their “dear Christian brother” with a prepared statement: “This is the testimony of Eldridge Cleaver, a man saved by the Grace and Mercy of Jesus Christ.” Offering up credibility to the Eldridge Cleaver Crusade, the statement continued, “Eldridge has already shared his testimony with millions of people in churches, stadiums, auditoriums, and via television, radio, and print media.”Footnote ⁴⁴ As Cleaver made his way to the platform, audiences were invited to pray that God would touch their hearts as they witnessed “God's power to redeem a lost soul and make that soul work for the glorification of Him.”Footnote ⁴⁵ Cleaver and the white conservatives that surrounded him appealed to the belief that God could use anyone—all the individual had to do was surrender. For Cleaver, surrender meant redemption. For the people encircled in the crusade, Cleaver told them that redemption meant the divine protection of Christian America from the dangers of radical, satanic communism, a redemption Cleaver believed that he was living out.

Shedding suspicion that he might be a “volatile black figure,” Cleaver toured the country as an evangelistic crusader from 1976 to 1980. He called audiences to surrender to Christ, embrace conservatism, and fight back against the forces of Marxism, socialism, and communism. Though Cleaver spoke the language of his conservative white audiences, his personal journal reflects frustration with the almost four years’ worth of touring the country, crusading for Christ. In one journal entry dated March 15, 1979, Cleaver wrote about a white woman named Judith who was the coordinating host for that evening's crusade. “Judith: you really are the worst kind of a bitch—with no enthusiasm about life.”Footnote ⁴⁶ A few notebook pages later, Cleaver recounted a confrontation between a Kate Millet and Kathleen Cleaver. According to Cleaver, Kate called Kathleen “a mole communist.” A page later, Cleaver scribbled down the words of an individual he spoke with after a 1979 crusade stop. “Niggers who specialize in being mean and cruel ain't got no future,” Cleaver wrote without further comment.Footnote ⁴⁷ Cleaver was also a regular guest on Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker's PTL Club, reflecting in his journal that he felt used as a “token” for the Bakkers’ white televangelical audience. While Cleaver was indeed aware of his peculiar position within crusading conservatism, his conversion story and ministry was a powerful force.

On nearly every printed program or television spot that promoted Eldridge Cleaver crusades, mega evangelical personalities, conservative politicians, and businessmen pledged their support of Cleaver's ministry and the authenticity of his conversion experience. Cleaver's investors, “spiritual advisors,” and high-profile supporters saw the burgeoning influence of the former Black Panther as an opportunity to extend their political and economic interests. Cleaver's personal narrative, combined with his newfound brand of anticommunism, served as a mechanism to insulate and extend the interests of those in power, namely, white conservative capitalists who believed that communism threatened to destroy faith, family, and free markets. It must be noted, however, that, after 1967, the threat to the establishment was no longer communism. Through the rhetoric and machinery of anticommunism, the target was civil rights, “Black Nationalists,” and other liberation movements. Cleaver served as a valuable weapon in the battle for political, religious, and cultural power.Footnote ⁴⁸ For example, when Cleaver seized the opportunity to reinvent himself and extend his influence, he and his cadre of conservatives sought to place his crusade at the center of conservative culture.

The Eldridge Cleaver Crusades: Faith, Family, and Free Markets

Faith at Work magazine introduced Eldridge Cleaver to their predominantly white, middle-class readership in June 1978 in an article titled “The Prodigal Returns Home.” Recounting Cleaver's time in exile in Cuba, Algeria, and France, the article's introduction read, “His disillusionment with the Communist world catapulted him into a confrontation with a new kind of leader he had not yet met: Jesus Christ.” Once a champion of Marxist communism domestically and internationally, Cleaver was thrust into Christian conservatism as a new crusader credentialed with the experience to speak on the dangers of communism, American race relations, and the transforming power of his newfound faith. For example, according to Cleaver and the conservative circles that he inhabited, international bankers and evil communists controlled the United Nations, enacting “anti-Zionist resolution” founded in “racial inferiority and superiority.” Likening the alleged racism of the United Nations to his own experience as a black man in the United States, Cleaver wrote, “I am certainly not a stranger to racism—I have personally experienced it in the ghettoes and prison yards of America.” White conservative opponents of the United Nations turned to Cleaver, employing his black experience as a marker of authority and verification of evangelical Zionism. Cleaver offered a degree of racial and religious legitimacy to those who sought to police and extend the boundaries of their power.Footnote ⁴⁹

By 1976, Cleaver was a born-again patriot, baptized in the blood of Jesus and in the Stars and Stripes. If readers of Faith at Work wanted to hear more from the born-again Black Panther, they could attend a meeting of the Eldridge Cleaver Crusades, subscribe to its mailing list, or purchase Cleaver's new book, Soul on Fire, which documented his troubled childhood, broken home, life of crime, former plans for Marxist revolution, and, finally, his conversion to conservative politics and Christianity.Footnote ⁵⁰ Soul on Fire did far more than narrate Cleaver's story; it was a testament to the very tenets of the Christian crusade that haunted American culture in the mid-twentieth century. Cleaver used Soul on Fire to call Americans to take individual responsibility in the battle against the nefarious forces that sought to undermine the foundations of America.

Like other conservative Christian crusaders, Cleaver made use of a variety of media platforms as a means to extend his crusade into the hearts, minds, and homes of the American family. Beginning in 1977, relatively late on the scene as a crusader, Cleaver had the full use of the motion picture at his disposal. In cooperation with Billy Zeoli and his evangelical media powerhouse, Gospel Films, Eldridge Cleaver Crusades produced a documentary on the life of Eldridge Cleaver that was released in tandem with Soul on Fire and John Oliver's Eldridge Cleaver: Reborn. On the first page of the 1978 Gospel Films catalog, distributed to thousands of churches, schools, and prisons, a somber looking Eldridge Cleaver seemed to contemplate his tumultuous past. “As a radical Black Panther, Eldridge Cleaver made an impact on America,” the advertisement read. “As a born again Christian, he is making a different impact on America.” Advertising the release of The Eldridge Cleaver Story, readers were promised “a film that really illustrates what being born again is all about.” For conservative white Christians, the former Black Panther was evidence of the power of Jesus—that even a “black radical” who “spent 15 years behind bars” could be remade into a new image, all displayed on the silver screen.Footnote ⁵¹

At the heart of The Eldridge Cleaver Story and Soul on Fire was an emphasis on the importance of family, which Cleaver believed was the strongest defense against the advance of satanic communism and “misled black radicalism.” Writing of Cleaver's homecoming for the San Francisco Examiner, James Finefrock observed, “One of his prime motivations for returning to the Bay Area is so his children can grow up in America. ‘I'm very concerned about that,’ he said.”Footnote ⁵² When speaking to audiences in print, on television, and in person about his experience in exile, he did not comment on efforts to topple the systems of U.S. imperialism or racial oppression. He made little mention of the harassment that he and his family experienced at the hands of the American intelligence complex. Instead, Cleaver spoke of the dynamics of an American family trying to survive away from the “land of the free.” While working closely with liberationist groups in Algeria and communist governments around the world, Cleaver recalled, “I had the pleasure of watching my two little children tottling around and growing very quickly, and at a certain point I was just overwhelmed with the sense that this was not an accident.” “I see a lot of fathers in the audience and mothers, so you can understand,” Cleaver said to his white, middle-class audience.Footnote ⁵³ “Suddenly, I just became aware that the Marxist-Leninist ideas I had to confront the universe weren't adequate to explain all of this,” Cleaver told one audience as he spoke on the importance of the American family, a talking point central to his crusade.Footnote ⁵⁴

Cleaver routinely appealed to the marital faithfulness of Kathleen as a model of Christian marriage. He encouraged the women of his audiences to remain faithful to their husbands, regardless of their current state of conduct. For Cleaver, wives needed to remain committed to their husbands because, at any moment, God could “turn them around and wake them up,” just like God did for Cleaver. “Don't give up! Kathleen never gave up on me and God didn't either,” Cleaver said on one crusade stop. With Kathleen by his side throughout the crusade tour, Cleaver often told his audiences, “She accepted all of the abuse I just heaped upon her head and stuck by me. . . . She just suffered and stood by.” Crowds exploded with applause for Kathleen's faithful suffering.Footnote ⁵⁵

Though Cleaver placed the sanctity of the family and “biblical womanhood” at the heart of his crusade, he wrote in his journal a passage that sounded like an excerpt from his 1968 Soul on Ice. “After thoroughly checking out women, you want to know my conclusion?” Cleaver asked. He answered, “That they are divine in certain phases and Satanic in others.” Speaking of Kathleen's long-suffering commitment to crusade audiences, Cleaver often transitioned to warn his audiences of what was at stake. Cleaver explained that to fail to protect the “sanctity of Christian marriage” was “to open the United States to the evil forces of Satan himself.” Cleaver did not mention his belief in the “Satanic phase” of women he wrote about in his journal. Nonetheless, Cleaver reminded audiences that faithful marriages were vital to the survival of America. Echoing the sentiments of his white crusading contemporaries, Cleaver spoke on the importance of heterosexual marriage. Convinced that “liberal Christianity” was violating God's command on human sexuality, Cleaver asked a crusade audience, “The Average Presbyterian, you who believes in Divorce, who ordain Women and homosexuals, how can you, even you condemn me?” “Your denominations are but masks for [unreadable scribble] fags,” the night's message notes read. For Cleaver and other conservative crusaders, if faith, family, and free markets were to survive, Americans needed to crusade for Christ and against the forces of communism, feminism, Satan, and others.Footnote ⁵⁶

In addition to his relationship with his children and Kathleen, Cleaver spoke often of his relationship with his father. Summoning the rhetoric that would eventually define a large subset of Christian conservatism in the latter half of the twentieth century, Cleaver routinely referenced his father to highlight the sanctity of the Christian American family—more specifically, the role of a Christian father. On numerous occasions, he argued that, if a Christian America were to survive, the family must be defended or, in some cases, the family must reassume its place as the bedrock of American society. For Cleaver and a host of other crusaders, the influences of communism, socialism, and liberalism dismantled the traditional family unit. The only way that the American family could be protected or rebuilt was through the leadership of a godly father and husband.

As Cleaver spoke against the evils of communism threatening to destroy the American family and, thus, the bedrock of Christian American civilization, conservatives summoned the core of his crusade to propagate distinct ideas of what it meant to be black and born again. While Cleaver was indeed navigating his new identity as a Christian crusader, many of his white counterparts were forced to confront the issue of race by way of Cleaver's public navigation of his blackness. Writing the epilogue of Cleaver's 1978 Soul on Fire, a book for sale at all Cleaver, Colson, and even Billy Graham crusades, Arthur DeMoss confessed, “If I, or any members of my family, have ever been guilty of bigotry or racial prejudice—as we undoubtedly have been—our relationship these past two years with Eldridge Cleaver and his family has done a great deal to obliterate this.” For DeMoss and the network of conservative businessmen, politicians, and ministry leaders who supported Cleaver, Cleaver stood as a challenge to the racial categories of whiteness that occupied the center of conservatism while simultaneously absolving them of prejudice. These networks insulated conservatives against claims of prejudice, upholding the former Marxist Black Panther who now occupied, at least in public perception, a leadership role as in their Christian community. DeMoss commented, “I soon realized that God had gifted Eldridge Cleaver with the practically unique ability of helping to unite and reconcile people—through the gospel of Christ—of various racial, religious, political, and economic backgrounds and persuasions. Cleaver was the embodiment of Christian colorblindness.”Footnote ⁵⁷

White Christian crusaders reveled in the opportunity to welcome a person of color into their ranks, acknowledging the cultural power of a Black man who disowned a life of Marxist communism and Black Nationalism. Evangelicals shared stories of Cleaver's influence in their thoroughly white contexts. DeMoss recounted one encounter Cleaver had with a police officer. After preaching at Jerry Falwell's Thomas Road Baptist Church in Lynchburg, Virginia, a “southern policeman” greeted Cleaver. After shaking hands, the policeman remarked to Cleaver, “Gosh, I doubt I'll ever want to wash that hand!” Reflecting on this story, DeMoss remarked, “When I think of what intense and total polarization existed here before these two men came to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ, I am reminded again of the tremendous unifying power of the gospel.” Ralph Wilkerson, pastor of a large, evangelical church in Southern California, often told the story of arranging a police escort for the Cleaver family following a bomb threat made on the church. Wilkerson believed that the threat was made after communists “learned that Eldridge would be giving his testimony there that evening.” Forced to explain to his six-year-old son Maceo why the police were escorting their family away from the church, Wilkerson recalled that Cleaver told Maceo that the police were protecting them. According to Wilkerson, Maceo responded, “I thought the cops hate us!” to which Cleaver responded, “No, son, that was the old Eldridge Cleaver.” “Eldridge, the former militant and a man who has spent almost half of his life in prison . . . is now engaged in a crusade against violence,” DeMoss wrote in the epilogue of Soul on Fire.Footnote ⁵⁸ Cleaver navigated his identity in the public eye, under constant surveillance of his former comrades and the conservative Christian circles he inhabited after 1975.

Fighting to liberate himself from the racial stereotypes that each crusade audience placed upon him, Cleaver turned once again to the man who helped create the crusading Eldridge Cleaver. “I believe Eldridge, deep down in his own way, has always wanted to help people,” Arthur DeMoss wrote. “He is extremely bright, intelligent, and articulate.” Credentialing Cleaver in the boilerplate language of color-blind Christianity, DeMoss called on his Christian “brothers and sisters” to pray for Cleaver. “Ever since his release from prison,” DeMoss wrote, “he has been inundated with every conceivable kind of request, proposition, financial lure, and temptation.” According to DeMoss, Cleaver would not be able to navigate his new world without the guiding prayers of the faithful “that he might be able to know and do God's perfect and holy and wonderful will for his life.” Cleaver would not be able to navigate the world without the prayerful support of white, conservative Christians. Stripped of his blackness and agency, DeMoss believed that Cleaver was free to crusade for Christ. At the same time, the most popular figures of crusading conservatism believed themselves liberated from the notion that black folk were excluded from the ranks of their religious community, pointing to Cleaver as the embodiment of what Jesus could do for even the “most wretched of sinners.”Footnote ⁵⁹

When Cleaver was not touring the country, speaking to white, middle-class audiences, he told those audiences that he felt called by God to minister to “disillusioned Black Muslims on both coasts and especially in the Bay Area.” Writing in 1978, Cleaver said, “I believe the door is now opened for the members of the nation/world community of Islam to be brought to the cross of Jesus Christ.” Cleaver believed that the Black Muslim community was in a “psychological crisis.” “Their problem,” he said, “which borders on brainwashing, is that they cannot accept a white Jesus.” Cleaver recognized that the images of white Jesus, white cross, and white Christianity stuck in the minds of black folk. He understood his ministry as a correction to what he believed was misguided thinking. Through the projects of Eldridge Cleaver Crusades, print media, a video docuseries, and a new emphasis on public speeches in African-American communities, Cleaver could guide African Americans through a “true understanding of Jesus Christ, the Semitic peoples, and the worldwide fellowship of Christians which touches every race, color, and nationality.”Footnote ⁶⁰ Cleaver's audiences understood his color-blind crusade as the solution to racial division and depravity in America.

In the wake of Wallace D. Muhammad's Los Angeles rally in February 25, 1978, where, according to Cleaver, he “wiped away the racist demonology of his father,” Cleaver believed that it was time for Christians to “take every opportunity to reach out to these brothers and sisters.” Writing to a white audience, Cleaver addressed the systemic issues facing people of color living in urban environments and the Christian obligation white people had to extend their ministry to people of color. “Historically, there has been a special game automatically played on the people in the ghetto,” he wrote. Speaking indirectly about the “Red Squads” that targeted black liberation groups, Cleaver said, “some cops testify today that their silent program was to get a file on every black guy. . . . Many times they would arrest people totally without cause, just to get the faces and prints on file.” Cleaver told readers that his friends working in the California government programed “police computers,” compiling a massive database of African Americans who might pose a current or future threat to the established order. In light of such injustice, Cleaver informed audiences that African Americans were “desperate and soul-searching and open.” Thus, it was the personal duty of Christians, white and black, to advocate for the oppressed, not by supporting efforts at black liberation, which had been targeted by the FBI since 1967, but by leading them to discover a personal encounter with Jesus Christ, a statement similar to the core efforts of many prison ministries that sought the redemption of black souls.Footnote ⁶¹ Signaling his full transformation, Cleaver told audiences that the liberation of the oppressed could only be found in Christ and conservatism.

Writing for the National Review in February 1984, Cleaver further distanced himself from efforts at black liberation and signaled the completion of his religious and racial remaking. In an open letter to Jesse Jackson, who was in the middle of his 1984 presidential campaign, Cleaver criticized Jackson's “blackness” and commitment to the United States. In February 1984, Jackson traveled to Syria to secure the release of Lieutenant Robert O. Goodman, Jr., whose plane had been shot down over Lebanon. While in Syria, Jackson held press conferences that spoke of his mission in Syria and publicized his presidential platform, which “called on the United States to recognize Fidel Castro's Government in Cuba, to renounce the first use of nuclear weapons and to cut the military budget by 20 percent, or roughly $50 billion.”Footnote ⁶² Tapping into the old fears of a Red Menace, Cleaver claimed that Jackson was exhibiting “extravagant, sophomoric exuberance, born of a terrible alienation from power,” which failed to take seriously “the life-and-death struggle between Communism and democracy.” For Cleaver and other conservatives, Jackson's trip to Syria was nothing more than a publicity stunt. In fact, Cleaver routinely told crusade audiences, readers of Soul on Fire, and viewers of The Eldridge Cleaver Story documentary that the struggle against communism was one that pitted the forces of good against the forces of evil. To fail to defeat the progressive march of communism, or anything that did not fall under the umbrella of Christian conservatism, was to accept the destruction of America. If America fell, so, too, did its supposed foundations: faith and family.Footnote ⁶³

Frustrated that Jesse Jackson was putting himself forward as “the quintessential expression of ‘black politics,’” Cleaver claimed that black people must oppose Jackson's tactics to “rescue their ‘blackness’” from Jackson's politics. Aside from allusions to Jackson's lack of masculinity and toughness, Cleaver believed that Jackson was not fit for his job. “You need to go back into the woodshed for a season,” Cleaver suggested. “Maybe you should purge the ranks of your advisors, many of who are unreconstructed Sixties radicals, U.S. haters, ex-[Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee] racists, and outright pro-Communists, like my congressman, Ron Dellums.” Appealing to the tenets of conservatism, Cleaver charged Jackson, “You have just played your race card, which has always been the ace of spades up your sleeve. . . . You are still a prisoner of color in your view of the world.” Cleaver concluded, “The American people are going to resent a cheap publicity stunt, diverting our national resources and machinery of state, crudely using the sacrifices of our fighting men and women as chips in the bargain.”Footnote ⁶⁴ Adopting the “color-blind” rhetoric of many white conservatives, Cleaver claimed that Jackson's discussion of race kept him prisoner to a flawed political system. Coupled with American anxieties over the late spread of communism, Cleaver rallied a network of conservative interests baptized in religious language to extend his crusade into discussions of race, U.S. politics, and the maintenance of American empire.