In "Soul on Ice," Eldridge Cleaver's reflections on the plight of American society somehow sounded like those of a prodigiously intelligent man describing a tree though never having seen one. Reading those prison essays, however, you knew that he had read and digested every manual on the subject. The result was, up to a point, brilliant and revealing. Beyond that point, lurked some empty although eloquent abstractions, patently incorrect in their assumptions, judgments and conclusions….

[In his astonishing collection "Post-Prison Writings and Speeches"] Cleaver in freedom has visualized clearly and precisely the trees, as well as the forest.

"The Decline of the Black Muslims" and "The Death of Martin Luther King: Requiem for Nonviolence," are essays on two approaches to the racial problem that Cleaver asserts are "played out." "Open Letter to Ronald Reagan," written in May, 1968, after Cleaver was arrested for violation of parole, denies the charges brought against him and asserts that he was, in fact, a "political prisoner." The black revolutionary theme is discussed in "Psychology: The Black Bible," an evaluation of Frantz Fanon's "The Wretched of the Earth," and in "The Land Question and Black Liberation," an essay on black-power activism vs. the land-acquisition policy of Marcus Garvey and the Black Muslims.

After reading this urgently important book, no one should fail to realize how accurately Cleaver pinpoints the American malaise and its relationship to current world affairs—or just how remarkable a man he is, or how valuable….

The Panthers, according to Cleaver (despite what many ill-informed whites think), never advocated "people going around inventing hostilities and burning down schools." Rather, as Cleaver says, they urged that hostilities in the black community be "focused on specific targets." The police, of course, a prime one. (p. 6)

Unlike some militants who have no plan or design other than to level society and kill off whites (and then what, another Biafra?), Cleaver realizes that a coalition of responsible persons is needed: "… we need sane people in this country; we need sane black people, and we need sane white people. Because we recognize that the Black Panther party can't do it by itself, black people can't do it by themselves. It's going to take white people who recognize the situation that exists in this world today to stand up, yes, to unite with their black brothers and sisters." But he warns: "If the white mother country is to have victory over the black colony, it is the duty of the black revolutionaries to insure that the Imperialists receive no more than a Pyrrhic victory, written in the blood of what America might have become."

Our history fairly bulges with the names of the right men at the right time who rescued America from the brink of disaster. Lately, however, we seem bent on destroying these saviors before they can accomplish their mission. Few men can equal the intellectual and moral growth achieved by Robert Kennedy (about whom Cleaver has some harsh things to say), Malcolm X or Cleaver in such a short span of time. Kennedy and Malcolm X are silenced forever; Cleaver, for his own survival, has been forced into exile. Time has run out. America can no longer afford to treat her would-be deliverers capriciously. Perhaps there is no future for America, and what we have been witnessing is the ugly portent.

Intellectually, I refuse to accept that. But reality is here and now, and the white man must stop playing games with the black man. One of the many games is window dressing—the illusion of substantive change by "tokenism"—which the white man considers his most skillful game. Cleaver assesses the growing disgust of black America correctly when he says, "There is a large and deepening layer of black people in this country who cannot be tricked anymore by having a few black faces put up front."

The horror of it all is that even after the millions of words of protest, the peaceful demonstrations and the violence, white America listens still with only a half-cocked ear. Is human dignity too much to ask? "We start with the basic principle," says Cleaver, "that every man, woman and child on the face of the earth deserves the very highest standard of living that human knowledge and technology is capable of providing. Period. No more than that, no less than that." (pp. 6, 38)