Where is eldridge cleaver

In , he was sent to the California State Prison at Soledad after being convicted of marijuana possession. After his release in , he was convicted of assault with intent to murder and was incarcerated at San Quentin and then Folsom prison. In the early s, he joined the Black Muslim movement founded by Elijah Muhammad. After his release from prison in December , he became a staff writer for Ramparts magazine and soon met the leaders of the newly formed Black Panther Party, including Huey Newton and Bobby Seale.

Cleaver was wounded and arrested on April 6, , in a Black Panther shootout with police. After a judge ordered him released from prison two months later, Cleaver undertook a series of lectures at the University of California at Berkeley and ran for president as the candidate of the Peace and Freedom Party.

On November 24, , three days before he was due to turn himself in, Cleaver fled and escaped to Cuba. A few months later, Cleaver was granted asylum in Algeria.

His wife joined him there, where they remained until moving to Paris in While living in Paris, Cleaver converted to Christianity and became motivated to return to the United States. After his return, Cleaver spent eight months in jail and performed community service to clear the legal obligations stemming from the shootout. In , Cleaver attempted to create a new religion, Christlam, which was a combination of Christianity and Islam. In the early s, he joined the Republican Party and endorsed Ronald Reagan in his presidential reelection campaign.

He made several runs for political office between and , including an unsuccessful candidacy for the Republican nomination in the U. Senate race in California. Cleaver had several drug-related arrests in the late s and early s but kicked his drug habit and rededicated himself to Christianity. In he joined the Black Panther Party. After a turbulent year and a half with the Panthers as their Minister of Information, Cleaver and his wife Kathleen fled the country to avoid Eldridge's return to prison on a assault conviction.

While in exile in Algeria, the FBI created a rift between Cleaver and Newton and the two began a mistaken battle for control of the party. This would be his final attempt to be involved in politics.

Cleaver died at the age of 62 in Los Angeles. Justice - General. Havana International Service in English. Interview with U. The old attempted murder charge was reduced to assault, and Cleaver was sentenced to 2, hours of community service. Critics called his political and religious conversion a put-on designed to help his court case, but Cleaver replied that he was merely evolving with the times. Change is a process of growth.

A year later, he shifted gears and formed his own religion--Christlam--along with a peculiar auxiliary he called Guardians of the Sperm. Mormonism came next. Edmund G. Politics continued to entice Cleaver, but shedding his revolutionary past proved no guarantee of success. He ran for the Berkeley City Council in , a candidacy doomed by his opposition to popular rent control laws, and two years later was a Republican candidate for the U. In that race, he condemned affirmative action--saying it promoted unqualified blacks--advocated a peacetime draft, and wore an American flag pin on his suit lapel.

The only time his name popped up was on the police blotter for arrests related to cocaine possession and burglary. His father was a waiter and nightclub piano player, and his mother was an elementary school teacher. A year later, Cleaver had his first brush with the law when he was arrested for bicycle theft and sent to a reformatory.