Eldridge Cleaver and Marvin X in front of house in West Oakland where the Black Panthers had a shoot out with Oakland Police. Cleaver was wounded and Lil' Bobby Hutton was murdered in cold blood by the OPD.
photo Muhammad Al Kareem
Marvin X replies to Dr. Hare
Doc, we archived a folder with letters from Kathleen to you.
Dr. Hare to Marvin X:
I didn’t know there was one. I remember the letter from Eldridge in jail on his return to this country. He commented aptly on my Speaking Out “For a Better Black Family” in Ebony, February, 1976. Hope you will find that one.
--- On Fri, 3/15/13, Nathan Hare
From: Nathan Hare
Subject: RE: RE: Hare Papers
To: "'Marvin X Jackmon'"
Date: Friday, March 15, 2013, 5:13 AMRandom thoughts for whatever they may be worth: I was Just thinking of your work with Eldridge Cleaver, it occurred to me that I was chairman of his defense committee when Kathleen first formed it after their return from Algiers. I knew her, having met her before Eldridge did in 1967, while speaking in Tuskegee, and later in passing out here in the Bay Area. I’d go by to see Eldridge at the jail and once apologized for coming so seldom and he said I came more than other people. For a long time I had a letter he wrote me from that jail, suggesting that he was a natural born writer, though people try to give the white female lawyer all the credit for Soul on Ice and his other writings. I became aware of him before Kathleen did (when we both had articles in Negro History Bulletin in 1962 (I as a young Howard University instructor and he as a prisoner – Folsom at that moment, I believe, though much is made of the time he spent at San Quentin. Bayard Rustin and Edith Austin (political editor of the Sun Reporter) were about the only blacks at the meeting. A report of it appeared with a picture of me as chairman on the front page of the Sun Reporter.
Amazon.com
ELDRIDGE CLEAVER - MY FRIEND THE DEVIL: A Memoir [Paperback]