Steve Biko and Eldridge Cleaver

To better understand the African Diaspora through the eyes of a black man, one must first comprehend the struggles that the man had fought his way through to give freedom that his people deserved. The two men that will be delved into in this paper; Steve Biko and Eldrige Cleaver, men who hail from two opposites sides of the Meridian yet have so much in common one would think they fought side by side for freedom. Steve Biko was anti-Apartheid politician in South Africa who died in 1977 after being tortured and starved for twenty-four days in prison for allegedly planning to overthrow the government and his "black consciousness campaign." Eldridge Cleaver on the other hand helped organize the Black Panther Movement in America in 1966 and was also its Minister for Information. After he returned from exile in Algeria, he renounced the Black Panther organization and had even run for president of the United States under the Peace and Freedom Party ticket. He extreme "black power" views made him one of the most controversial African-Americans of the time. As we come to understand the different political views of these two great blacks, we will also come to see that they possess the same quality; freedom for their people and their desire to see better organization.

Throughout their entire lives Steve Biko, founder of the Black Consciousness Movement and Eldridge Cleaver, founder of the Black Panther Movement had become very politically active during their youth. Steve Biko had grown up to be an intelligent student and even went to medical school. There he joined the National Union of South African Students (NUSAS) so that he could be involved more within his community and also help out more within his medical school. He begun to understand the effect the racial system of apartheid was having on the African community when the NUSAS began to be controlled by white laissez-faire supporters who had neglected the needs of black students. So he branched off and continued the fight for freedom with his new organization, the South African Students Organization (SASU), formed in 1969, which was became involved with providing affordable medical clinics and legal aid to the black communities who were at disadvantage. He also helped form the Black Peoples Convention in 1972 which was responsible for developing social programs such as job centers and other developmental programs in Durban, a mostly black populated region of South Africa. The creation of the BPC helped start up other different black organizations around the country such as the Black Workers Project who supported the black labor unions that were not allowed to be identified as Ð''legal' under the Apartheid-ruling administration.

A year later in 1973, he was prevented from further speaking about the black consciousness movement by the still-ruling Apartheid government and was constrained to his birthplace in Kings William's Town which was located on the Eastern Side of Cape Town. While there he set up the Zimele Trust Fund which was used to aid political prisoners and their families. As a result of this Biko was imprisoned many times and was interrogated and tortured as well by Eastern Cape security police. On September 11 he had suffered brain damage and doctors recommended him to a hospital. Instead he was driven 1200 km for 12 hours to Pretoria, the capital, while he was lying naked in the back of an SUV. He felt just like the slaves he had read about who had been dragged from their African countries and brought naked to the New World. By the time he got to the Pretoria Central Prison, he had suffered severe damage and died naked on the floor of a prison cell.

Eldridge Cleaver on the other hand lived a completely abused life. As a teenager he had been sent to a reform school for the youth after he was caught selling marijuana and stealing a bicycle. After he was released he was given 30 months in prison for possessing marijuana again. It was while he was here in prison that he had grown fond of politics by reading books by Karl Marx and Thomas Paine. He also became interested in African history by reading the works of Carter G. Woodson, John Henrik Clarke and Ivan Van Sertima. He was released again in 1957 but then a year later he was charged for attempted murder and given a 2-14 year prison sentence at the infamous San Quentin Prison in California. It was there that he began to be inspired by the civil rights movement of the 1960's and closely followed the speeches and writings of Malcolm X. He was drawn to Malcolm X's theories on the beginning of black religion and Islam as well as the need for a black movement.

When he was released from San Quentin in 1966 he helped form the Black Panther Party movement along with Huey P. Newton in Oakland, California and served as the Minister of Information. His image had completely changed and he had become a black revolutionary who wanted a black power uprising to emerge and the formation of a black socialist government. A year later in 1967, he published his famous book Soul on Ice, a collection of essays written while he was in prison that dealt with the ideas of racism and classed societies. The book made him one of the important