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Books by
Eldridge Cleaver
Soul on Ice /
Post-Prison Writings and
Speeches / Target
Zero; A Life in Writing /
Conversation with Eldridge Cleaver
Being Black /
Education and Revolution /
Eldridge Cleaver /
Eldridge Cleaver Is Free
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Bio Sketch
1935 (August 31) -- Born in Wabbaseka, Arkansas.
His family moved first to Phoenix and then to Los Angeles. Grew up in Watts
section.
His father was a dining car waiter; his mother a maid. Ran into trouble with the
law and finally arrested for theft and
selling marijuana.
1954 to 1957 -- Imprisoned at eighteen for possession of a bag of
marijuana
1957 -- Arrested for rape and attempted murder. Convicted of assault with intent to murder and
sent to California's tough San Quentin and Folsom prisons. Received two to
fourteen year sentence.
more
bio
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Table
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Why Carl Hampton Must
Be Remembered
By
Elbert “Big Man” Howard
21 July 2010
When Carl Hampton was still in his
teens, he became aware of the horrific
conditions that existed in the Black
communities in Texas. We must remember
him because he loved his people and
devoted himself to changing these
conditions and his young life was ended
because of these facts.
On a visit to California, Carl came into
contact with the Black Panther Party. |
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He
saw that the BPP had developed into a
revolutionary, community-based
organization. In 1969, he returned to
Houston, Texas, determined to establish
a Black Panther Party Chapter there. He
was particularly impressed with the BPP
concept of organizing coalitions across
ethnic and color lines and wanted to do
so with various groups in the Houston
area, i.e. the Mexican American Youth
organization (MAYO), the John Brown
Revolutionary League, and the Young
Patriots. These groups worked together
to oppose police brutality in Houston. .
. .
One day, a Black youth was stopped and
harassed by two white cops while selling
the BPP newspapers and Carl Hampton
arrived and intervened on behalf of this
youngster. Carl was armed with a pistol,
which was legal at the time, and the
cops became enraged at the sight of this
young Black man with a weapon; they
attempted to arrest Carl. |
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Much
like the scenes that were occurring in Oakland and other
cities, guns were drawn by both the cops and People’s
Party II members. It became a standoff: a large crowd of
Third Ward people gathered on Dowling Street. The press
later reported that as many as 2000 residents moved
between the police and the People’s Party II’s
headquarters. Most of these people who had witnessed the
confrontation were outraged at the Houston police
response.
. . .
In true Texas fashion, on July 26th, 1970, Carl Hampton
was ambushed, dry-gulched by hidden cowards who shot and
killed this true revolutionary Black man. Police snipers
had positioned themselves on the roof of St John’s
Baptist Church – they laid in wait for Carl to come in
response to a message that there were white men on the
roof of a Black church in the Black community. Carl and
his comrades went to investigate this and as they
prepared to cross Dowling Street, Carl gave the order
not to fire their weapons unless they were fired upon.
As they then crossed the street, a shot rang out and
Carl fell to the ground. He died at 2:30 AM on the next
morning. Other members were arrested and prosecuted and
harassed but other young men took over and the People’s
Party II continued on.
Source:
Jesse Muhammad Blog
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Lynchsong
By Lorraine Hansberry
I can hear Rosalee
See the eyes of Willie McGee
My mother told me about
Lynchings
My mother told me about
The dark nights
And dirt roads
And torch lights
And lynch robes
The
faces of men
Laughing white
Faces of men
Dead in the night
sorrow night
and a
sorrow night
1951
Source:
AmericanLynching |
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Writer Lorraine Hansberry's
sober eulogy of the death of Willie McGee weighed heavy on the
hearts and minds of the American Left. On May 8, 1951, a crowd of
five hundred lingered outside the courthouse of Laurel, Mississippi,
to witness the execution of yet another black man convicted for
allegedly raping a white woman. His 1945 lightning trial resulted in
a guilty conviction delivered in less than two and a half minutes by
an all-white, male jury, setting off a heated five-year legal
struggle that drew national headlines. Despite an aggressive appeals
defense team who attempted every legal maneuver in the book, the US
Supreme Court ultimately chose not to intervene. With the legal
lynching of the Martinsville Seven in February, Ethel and Julius
Rosenberg's conviction in March, followed by the execution of McGee
in May, 1951 was a bad year for Left-leaning lawyers (Parrish 1979;
Rise 1995). Most discouraging, national news sources like the New
York Times and Life magazine red-baited the "Save Willie
McGee" campaign and—as Life reported—its "imported" lawyers (Popham
1951a; Life 1951). Few felt McGee's passing with as heavy a heart as
his chief counsel, thirty-one-year-old Bella Abzug. |
Before Abzug became a representative in
Congress and a leader in the peace and women's movements, she confronted the
Southern political and legal system at the height of the early Cold War.
Retained in 1948 by the Civil Rights Congress (CRC)—a New York-headquartered
Popular Front legal defense organization—the novice labor lawyer honed her civil
rights . . .
Source:
https://Litigation-Essentials.LexisNexis
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The Eyes of Willie McGee
A
Tragedy of Race, Sex, and Secrets in the
Jim Crow South
By Alex Heard
An
iconic criminal case—a black man
sentenced to death for raping a white
woman in Mississippi in 1945—exposes the
roiling tensions of the early civil
rights era in this provocative study.
McGee's prosecution garnered
international protests—he was championed
by the Communist Party and defended by a
young lawyer named Bella Abzug (later a
New York City congresswoman and
cofounder of the National Women's
Political Caucus), while luminaries from
William Faulkner to Albert Einstein
spoke out for him—but journalist Heard
(Apocalypse Pretty Soon) finds the saga
rife with enigmas. The case against
McGee, hinging on a possibly coerced
confession, was weak and the legal
proceedings marred by racial bias and
intimidation. (During one of his trials,
his lawyers fled for their lives without
delivering summations.) But Heard
contends that McGee's story—that he and
the victim, Willette Hawkins, were
having an affair—is equally shaky. The
author's extensive research delves into
the documentation of the case, the
public debate surrounding it, and the
recollections of McGee and Hawkins's
family members. Heard finds no easy
answers, but his nuanced, evocative
portrait of the passions enveloping
McGee's case is plenty revealing.—Publishers
Weekly |
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updated 1 October 2007 / updated 25
February 2008 |
