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Article: The graying of a Black Panther: Eldridge Cleaver touts God, not violence.(Originated from Knight-Ridder Newspapers)
- Article from:
- Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service
- Article date:
- November 26, 1995
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1995 Knight-Ridder/Tribune News Service. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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With gun in hand on the balcony of his apartment in Rocheville, France, Eldridge Cleaver stared nervously into a star-filled Mediterranean sky and pondered the freedom that awaited him with a simple pull of the trigger.
It was autumn 1975. Nearly seven years had passed since Cleaver fled the United States after a shootout with police in Oakland, Calif. Now, the fugitive minister of information for the Black Panther Party wanted to come home. But doing so meant a prison term, and Cleaver felt suicide was his only way out.
He was seconds away from death when, Cleaver says, a path of light appeared to him in the sky. The radiant beam led straight to a prison ...