Eldridge Cleaver, Speaker's Platform: October 9, 1968

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Shortly following the 1968 release of his book Soul on Ice, and during a time of civil unrest and riots in more than 100 U.S. cities, the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Senator Robert F. Kennedy, and rioting at the Chicago Democratic National Convention in August 1968, Eldridge Cleaver addresses a crowd from the San Francisco State speaker’s platform. Note: Cleaver's address preceded by one month the San Francisco State Student Strike (November 6, 1968-March 20, 1969).

Originally Recorded By: The Poetry Center
Location: SFSU, San Francisco
Date: 10/09/1968
Total Run Time: 00:45:34
Contributor: Mark Linenthal, Unknown Speaker
Rights: ©© American Poetry Archives. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. For all other uses please email poetry@sfsu.edu
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Unidentified speaker from the Associated Students of San Francisco State College introduces Eldridge Cleaver as Minister of Education for the Black Panther Party for Self Defense and bestows upon him an honorary life-time membership in the student association (00:02)
Poetry Center Director and English Professor Mark Linenthal welcomes Eldridge Cleaver, remarks on his achievement as a writer, and on writing as a means of salvation (02:01)
Eldridge Cleaver greets the crowd and thanks the Associated Students, [California State Governor Ronald] ?Mickey Mouse? Reagan and [State Superintendent of Schools Max] ?Donald Duck? Rafferty for making it possible (04:25)
Cleaver remarks on arriving late and 'CP time' (04:44)
Remarks on a lecture he gave to students at the University of California Berkeley the day before. He calls out "this fool, your governor [Ronald Reagan]...scalawag carpet-bagging racist pig George Wallace, bone-nosed Nixon, the jive-assed regents...and 'all the equivocating pigs of the power structure'" and advocates for their imprisonment (06:06)
Remarks on a 'new song' he has entitled "Fuck Ronald Reagan," on Reagan's B-grade movies, and then teaches the song to the crowd (08:26)
Calls Reagan a coward for twisting the arms of the courts and twisting the arms of the Regents to deny him the right or privilege to deliver 10 lectures, for getting the court to send him back to the penitentiary, and working behind the scenes with the pigs of the power structure (11:09)
Remarks on his time in prison and the crime of speaking out against the power structure (12:23)
Remarks on the task of 'our generation' to stop the war machine and bring down the pigs of the power structure. Note: Cleaver states his age as 22, although his actual age at the time is 33 (13:39)
Calls for a new history book, a people's history that recognizes the cultural revolution going on in America (15:07)
"It's time for this generation to start taking power" (17:20)
Remarks on the fact that he is not reading from his book; slurs the San Francisco police department and San Francisco Mayor Alioto as a "wheeling and dealing motherfucker" (17:36)
Remarks on a meeting at City Hall about the Kearney Report covered on tape by KQED, and a conversation with Mayor Alioto (18:39)
"Look at what the pigs are doing throughout the country...the pigs are the power structure" (23:18)
"White people in this country have never had white power. They've had pig power" (23:53)
Remarks on the contradiction between some of the white people in this country and "the pigs of the power structure" that we have to deal with (24:13)
"There is one principle that we start with...that every man, woman, and child on the face of the earth has a right to...the highest standard of living, including education" (25:40)
Various remarks on the capitalistic system and "the arrogant presumptuous pigs who think they slid from their mothers' wombs with a handful of blue chip stock and the other hand full of deeds of trust" (26:20)
Remarks on how much time is remaining for his speech (30:30)
Remarks about Huey P. Newton (31:26)
Remarks on an editorial by Carleton Goodman (32:47)
Remarks on Ramparts magazine (where original chapters of Soul on Ice were published) as the "Ministry of Information of the American Revolution," and "pigs shooting gas and whooping protesters in Chicago" (at the 1968 Democratic National Convention) (34:40)
Remarks on the eagle taking the place of the swastika as the symbol of terror for the people of the world (36:29)
Remarks on the perversion of the noble ideals written by slave-holders and never enacted (36:40)
Remarks on The Biography of Huey P. Newton by Bobby Seale (37:02)
Challenges Ronald Reagan to a duel (37:21)
Reads a selection from The Biography of Huey P. Newton (37:46)
Remarks on the police in Oakland (38:35)
Remarks on non-violence being blown away with Martin Luther King, meeting God in heaven, and forming the Black Panther Party again (39:01)
Remarks on the archangel Michael as the chief of police, and how Huey P. Newton would stand up to him with a sword (40:50)
"All power to the people" (42:27)
Remarks on the continent belonging to "the red people," meaning the American Indian, and receipt of stolen property (42:39)

CleaverEldridge19681009DIG.mp3 (15.71 MB – MP3 audio)