Early Life
Born in Wabbaseka, Arkansas, as a child Cleaver moved with his family to Phoenix and then to Los Angeles. In 1967 he married Kathleen Neal Cleaver; they divorced in 1987. They had a son, Ahmad Maceo Eldridge Cleaver, and a daughter, Joju Younghi Cleaver.
As a teenager he was involved in petty crime and spent time in detention centers. At the age of eighteen he was convicted of a felony drug charge and sent to the adult prison at Soledad. In 1958, he was further convicted of rape and assault with intent to murder and eventually served time in Folsom and San Quentin prisons.
Read more about this topic: Eldridge Cleaver
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or life:
“To be candid, in Middlemarch phraseology, meant, to use an early opportunity of letting your friends know that you did not take a cheerful view of their capacity, their conduct, or their position; and a robust candour never waited to be asked for its opinion.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)
“We have had many harbingers and forerunners; but of a purely spiritual life, history has afforded no example. I mean we have yet no man who has leaned entirely on his character, and eaten angels’ food; who, trusting to his sentiments, found life made of miracles; who, working for universal aims, found himself fed, he knew not how; clothed, sheltered, and weaponed, he knew not how, and yet it was done by his own hands.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)