Editing Eldridge Cleaver (section)

==''Soul on Ice'' (1968)==
{{Main|Soul on Ice (book)}}

{{Blockquote|text=From my prison cell, I have watched America slowly coming awake. It is not fully awake yet, but there is soul in the air and everywhere I see beauty. I have watched the sit-ins, the freedom rides the Mississippi Blood Summers, demonstrations all over the country, the F.S.M. movement, the teach-ins, and the mounting protest over Lyndon Strangelove’s foreign policy —all of this, the thousands of little details, show me it is time to straighten up and fly right. That is why I decided to concentrate on my writings and efforts in this area. We are a very sick country —I, perhaps, am sicker than most. But I accept that. I told you in the beginning that I am extremist by nature —so it is only right that I should be extremely sick. I was very familiar with the Eldridge who came to prison, but that Eldridge no longer exists. And the one I am now is in some ways a stranger to me.|source=Eldridge Cleaver, ''Soul on Ice'', 1968<ref name=NYTobit />}} 
While in prison, he wrote a number of philosophical and political essays, first published in [[Ramparts (magazine)|''Ramparts'']] magazine and then in book form as ''Soul on Ice''.<ref>{{harvnb|Cummins|1994|pp=[https://books.google.com/books?id=QXpejAPTqH0C&pg=PA98 98–99]}}</ref>

In the most controversial part of the book, Cleaver acknowledges committing acts of rape, stating that he initially raped black women in the ghetto "for practice" and then embarked on the serial rape of white women. He described these crimes as politically inspired, motivated by a genuine conviction that the rape of white women was "an insurrectionary act".<ref>{{harvnb|Cleaver|1968|p=[https://archive.org/details/soulonicebyeldridgecleaver/page/n27/mode/2up 14]}}</ref> When he began writing ''Soul on Ice'', he unequivocally renounced rape and all his previous reasoning about it.<ref name=Gates2004/><ref name=NYTobit/>

The essays in ''Soul on Ice'' are divided into four thematic sections:<ref>Andrews, William L., Frances Smith Foster, and Trudier Harris. ''The Oxford Companion to African American Literature''. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997.</ref> "Letters from Prison", describing Cleaver's experiences with and thoughts on crime and prisons; "Blood of the Beast", discussing race relations and promoting black liberation ideology; "Prelude to Love – Three Letters", love letters written to Cleaver's attorney, Beverly Axelrod; and "White Woman, Black Man", on gender relations, black masculinity, and sexuality.