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ELDRIDGE CLEAVER’S CODPIECE

(and other sidequests)

About


Eldridge Cleaver’s Codpiece is an aggregator of all things related to Leroy Eldridge Cleaver’s (August 31, 1935 – May 1, 1998) fashion debut in 1975. This ongoing resource collection is part of KJR Studios/Kameelah Janan Rasheed’s gather & disperse platform.

note: I am not a historian and I accept all responsibility for any errors here.

But, Why?

I am interested in belief systems and how they shift over time. Given the celebritification of political leaders, I was searching for that soft edge that might help me unpack, not so much make sense of, a man’s [de]evolution as he literally tried out as many versions of belief and politics as he could before dying in 1998. I am interested in knowledge production and revision as an itinerant and destabilizing process. 

Upon returning to the United States in 1975 after seven years in exile, his political and religious beliefs underwent many changes. As a born-again Christian, he became involved in the Unification Church and CARP. After leaving the Sun Myung Moon's community, better known as the Moonies, he tried out Catholicism. When Catholicism did not suffice, in 1979 he formed his own revivalist ministry called Eldridge Cleaver Crusades. He purchased  40 acres in the Nevada desert with plans to use it for his ministry's headquarters.