Eulogy

By Bobby Seale

As our information minister in the early years of the Black Panther Party, ELDRIDGE CLEAVER was a one-of-a-kind charismatic revolutionary who understood the politics of the human-liberation struggle. Party members called him "Papa" or "the Rage!" Fresh out of prison, he became a literary giant with his book Soul on Ice. Eldridge put his heart, mind and soul into the 1960s movement, but in the early '80s, I read that he said the party should have never existed. He tried to contact me, but I refused to speak with him. One day his ex-wife Kathleen called me to say Eldridge wanted to go on the lecture circuit with me and he wouldn't denounce our history. I figured he needed the money; and I remembered when he had money after Soul on Ice, he just handed it to me to organize things. We had become very close friends since we started lecturing together. A lot of people said negative things about Eldridge's being a born-again Christian and registered Republican; but I knew him beyond that, they didn't. Even as a Republican, he denounced Gingrich's Contract with America, throwing it across the stage. Sent the crowd wild. Like in the early years, he would do wild things, like challenging Ronald Reagan to a duel in the streets. He knew how to grab the imagination of the people! And that's just one of the many reasons I truly respected him.

--Bobby Seale, founding chairman, Black Panther Party