I was influenced by this sda uncle of mine early. I didn't join the church til much later. When I was in the 8th grade I used to hang out with the older boys, guys that were already in high school. We would play sandlot ball, walk to the high school games, stuff like that. Along the way, they would all be talking about the autobiography of malcolm x, and eldridge cleaver's soul on ice. Naturally, I had to read those books also. Malcolm x had the biggest influence on me. I read soul on ice to find out what happened to the black power movement after Malcolm had left the scene.
I intrinsically knew 3 things then: that sda stuff my uncle was telling me about the sabbath and all was the truth. Before that I attended a baptist church. I knew that Malcolm's choice to become a muslim was not the way to go, not for me anyway. I also knew that the fact that Eldridge Cleaver used maoist type communism as the basis of his beliefs was an even worse way to go.
I haven't paid much attention to Cleaver since then, and that was at least 30 years ago.

DB

Not necessarily. It depends on many factors, not least of which is whether the person who has it is controlling his blood surgar level through diet and proper uses of insulin. Many people don't follow the doctors orders about it and lots of people have diabetes but aren't aware of it.

Cleaver wrote a companion piece called Soul on Fire, explaining his change from Leftist revolutionary to Christian.

I think you made the right choice to avoid those radical ideologies. I was very attracted to them at one period of my life. Vietnam radicalized a lot of young people during the late 60s and early 70s. It sort of swallowed up the Civil Rights Movement because the issue of the war was viewed as more crucial since the main objective of CRM, the Civil Rights Act, had already been passed.

I was a teenager when Cleaver was a presidentail candidate on the Peace and Freedom ticket. He made appearances on various TV talk shows, including the Louis Lomax show, which I used to watch a lot. But not very long afterwards, Cleaver and some other Black Panther's were involved in a shoot out with police. There were people killed in that gun battle and Cleaver was arrested. Cleaver jumped bail and went to Cuba and eventually on to Algeria. From there he wrote some good stuff, including fiction that was published in Evergreen, a highly reputable literary magazine of that time. I followed Cleaver's experiences closely in those days because I admired him very much, along with Che Guevara and Fidel Castro. One time I walked down a street in San Francisco and was robbed by about 5 black teenagers only a little younger than I was. They took a camera and my wallet and some other personal stuff. Then I started talking to them about Cleaver and within a few minutes they had given my things back to me. That shows the interest in Eldridge Cleaver among even the kids on the streets of the black community in those days.

Today I find that such kids don't care for the most part about political and social issues. I try to get them interested in reading books and in history but it's hard going. I've never even found one among the kids I take care of who's heard of Eldridge Cleaver, much less read his book.

Some parts of San Franciso are dangerous for anyone, white, black or whatever. Places like the tenderloin, some parts of the mission district, even along Market street.

I don't even want to think about how that name came to be.

If a person's heart is locked, going to church only frustrates them.

olger