While imprisoned at Soledad, Cleaver obtained his high school diploma and read the opuses of Thomas Paine, Richard Wright, Lenin, Machiavelli, Karl Marx, Voltaire, Malcolm X, and W.
Though he was released within two years, later in 1957, he was convicted of sexual assault with intent to murder and was subsequently sent to San Quentin and then onto Folsom. After a series of arrests throughout his adolescence, in 1954, he was sent to Soledad State Prison for possession of marijuana. In 1946, his family moved to Watts, California, where, although the racial climate was not as acute, the young Cleaver began delving into petty crime.
Background Įldridge Cleaver was born in Wabbaseka, Arkansas, in 1935, amidst the severe and unrepentant racism of the South. Throughout his narrative, Cleaver describes not only his transformation from a marijuana dealer and serial rapist into a convinced Malcolm X adherent and Marxist revolutionary, but also his analogous relationship to the politics of America. The treatises were first printed in the nationally-circulated monthly Ramparts and became widely read for their illustration and commentary on Black America. Originally written in Folsom State Prison in 1965, and published three years later in 1968, it is Cleaver's best known writing and remains a seminal work in African-American literature. Soul on Ice is a memoir and collection of essays by Eldridge Cleaver.
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