Revolution or Death: The Story of Eldridge Cleaver

From the publisher

In the 1960s, no black political group stood for grassroots insurgency more than the Black Panther Party. The figure who embodied the militant and controversial spirit of the Black Panther Party more than anyone was Eldridge Cleaver. Charismatic, brilliant, and courageous, Cleaver built a base of power and influence that struck fear deep in the heart of white America. It was therefore shocking to many left-wing radicals when Cleaver turned his back on black revolution, the Nation of Islam, and communism in 1975. While Cleaver seemed sincerely disillusioned with radicalism, his erratic behavior over the next two decades revealed something that had been a latent part of his psyche all along—his narcissistic megalomania. His influence declined significantly through the 1980s until he found himself back on the streets committing petty crimes. By the time he died, in 1998, he was largely viewed as a turncoat who had betrayed the cause of black freedom.

How can we make sense of Cleaver's precipitous decline from a position as one of America's most vibrant black writers and activists? And how do his contradictory identities as criminal, party leader, international diplomat, Christian conservative, and Republican politician reveal that he was more than just a traitor to the advancement of civil rights? Revolution or Death answers answers these questions and many more by providing the first life story of one of the most notorious black revolutionaries in history. It explores the audacious dreams and spiritual transformations of the eccentric radical and places him squarely within the context of his changing times. Author Justin Gifford explores previously unseen materials from Cleaver's extensive archive to create the story of a man far more compelling and complex than anyone has given him credit for. In a country defined by its extreme political positions on the right and left, Cleaver embodied both ideologies in pursuit of his conflicting ideals, and it was his inability to resolve them that ultimately destroyed him.

“A searching biography of the Black Panther leader who ‘was a man of seemingly irreconcilable contradictions’ . . . An illuminating study of a complex, memorable historical figure.”

—Kirkus Reviews, starred review

“Gifford has done deep research into Cleaver’s life his tumultuous era, benefiting from interviews with Cleaver’s children and his wife, Kathleen. He honors Cleaver’s strengths—his literary brilliance, his justified rage—and his failings . . . A sad story but a deeply American one, and Gifford tells it powerfully.”

—Peter Fish, San Francisco Chronicle

“A spectacularly well-researched and gripping account of a highly charismatic and deeply flawed figure, the historical moments when he was center stage, and his precipitous fall.  No punches pulled.  The telling jumps off the page.”  

—Jeffrey Haas, author of The Assassination of Fred Hampton: How the FBI and the Chicago Police Murdered a Black Panther

“As the fire-breathing Minister of Information for the Black Panther Party at its zenith, Eldridge Cleaver was respected and feared by his enemies as well as his allies. He was a force of nature, a living myth of a man who relished in being the white man’s worst nightmare. Justin Gifford unpacks the mythology and the mayhem to reveal Leroy Eldridge Cleaver the man. Love him or loathe him, you won’t be able to put this book down.”  

—Ricky Vincent, author of Party Music: The Inside Story of the Black Panthers’ Band and How Black Power Transformed Soul Music

“Justin Gifford expertly contextualizes the most explosive and transformative decades in American history as he illuminates how the various facets of Eldridge Cleaver’s life and leanings were shaped by the systematic injustice he sought to conquer.” 

—Karin L. Standford, co-author with Wayne Pharr of Nine Lives of a Black Panther: A Story of Survival

Street Poison: The Biography of Iceberg Slim

From the publisher 

The first and definitive biography of one of America's bestselling, notorious, and influential writers of the twentieth century: Iceberg Slim, né Robert Beck, author of the multimillion-copy memoir Pimp and such equally popular novels as Trick Baby and Mama Black Widow. From a career as a, yes, ruthless pimp in the '40s and '50s, Iceberg Slim refashioned himself as the first and still the greatest of “street lit” masters, whose vivid books have made him an icon to such rappers as Ice-T, Jay-Z, and Snoop Dogg and a presiding spirit of "blaxploitation" culture. You can't understand contemporary black (and even American) culture without reckoning with Iceberg Slim and his many acolytes and imitators. 

Literature professor Justin Gifford has been researching the life and work of Robert Beck for over a decade, culminating in Street Poison, a colorful and compassionate biography of one of the most complicated figures in twentieth-century literature. Drawing on a wealth of archival material—including FBI files, prison records, and interviews with Beck, his wife, and his daughters—Gifford explores the sexual trauma and racial violence Beck endured that led to his reinvention as Iceberg Slim, one of America's most infamous pimps of the 1940s and '50s. From pimping to penning his profoundly influential confessional autobiography, Pimp, to his involvement in radical politics, Gifford's biography illuminates the life and works of one of American literature's most unique renegades.

“Mr. Gifford’s taut biography is important and overdue. The author, an associate professor of English literature at the University of Nevada, Reno, is a dogged researcher who arrives at a somewhat unexpected conclusion: The stories in Pimp are mostly true.”

—Dwight Garner, The New York Times

“Writing the life of a celebrated memoirist can be a daunting and thankless task, but Justin Gifford handles the job with aplomb in his new book, Street Poison. A decade’s worth of research allows him frequently to correct the record where Pimp and Beck’s other autobiographical writings may have fudged the facts. But Gifford’s greatest achievement is placing Beck’s life within the context of larger social, political and economic changes.“

—Jon Michaud, The Washington Post

“Gifford writes that 'as a master teller of tales, [Beck] also occasionally embellished the truth.' That would make him a challenge for any biographer, but Gifford meets it with a combination of solid research and genuine compassion for this complex, often troubled man.... 'I have tried to tell his tale the way he might have wanted: clearly, honestly, and without moralizing,' Gifford writes. By refusing to either idealize or demonize his subject, he succeeds.“

—Kate Tuttle, The Boston Globe

“Gifford patiently crafts a narrative that shows how Beck, a Chicago pimp, became the godfather of hip-hop, an integral cog in Hollywood's Blaxploitation era and one of the most-read black authors of the 20th century. In addition to providing phenomenally researched material into the life and writings of Beck, including FBI files, unpublished fiction and letters written from Beck to his publisher, Gifford provides us with robust historical, pointed political context for new and seasoned readers of Beck's novels Pimp, Trick Baby and Mama Black Widow.”

—Kiese Laymon, Los Angeles Times

“The first biography of Robert Beck, aka Iceberg Slim, (1918-1992), builds a compelling case that the pimp-turned-popular author provided the foundation for gangsta rap, Blaxploitation movies, and so much of the underground culture that became mainstream. Gifford transcends the opacity of academic writing in this lively account... 'This is not a story without tragedy....But it is a story of redemption and breathtaking creativity, too,' writes Gifford, who not only tells the story well, but shows why it's so significant.”

—Kirkus Reviews, starred review

“[A] thoroughly engrossing biography . . . In addition to lucid critical assessments of Beck’s published and unpublished works, Gifford offers a flavorful account of African-American cultural and  social history. He makes an entertaining, informing and most persuasive argument that a writer ‘practically unknown in the American [literary] mainstream is arguably one of the most influential figures of the past fifty years.’”

—Publishers Weekly

“Gifford’s dramatic, hard-core, contextually dynamic, and powerfully affecting biography is sharply relevant to today’s civil rights struggles.“

—Booklist, starred review

“The great story in “Street Poison” is not about the making of a pimp but about the making of a writer and self-styled political prophet.”

—Robin Kelley, The New Yorker

Pimping Fictions: African American Crime Literature and the Untold Story of Black Pulp Publishing

From the publisher

In Pimping Fictions, Justin Gifford provides an investigation of hundreds of paperbacks written by black authors Chester Himes, Donald Goines, and Iceberg Slim (aka Robert Beck), among many others. Gifford draws from an array of archival materials to provide a first-of-its-kind literary and cultural history of this distinctive genre. He evaluates the artistic and symbolic representations of pimps, sex-workers, drug dealers, and political revolutionaries in African American crime literature—characters looking to escape the racial containment of prisons and the ghetto. Gifford also explores the struggles of these black writers in the literary marketplace, from the era of white-owned publishing houses like Holloway House—that fed books and magazines like Players to black readers—to the contemporary crop of African American women writers reclaiming the genre as their own.

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“Gifford’s groundbreaking study of the 'art and business of black crime literature' is ingenious in its embrace of elements of street literature from historical and literary perspectives along with the culture of the writers who produce it, the commercial enterprises that publish it, and the 'white-controlled spaces' they occupy and must negotiate.... In exploring how these writers, little noticed by academia or mainstream media, negotiate the connection between white-controlled spaces in urban centers, prisons, and publishing, Gifford makes a persuasive case for their importance.“ 

—Publishers Weekly, starred review

“Gifford offers an example of what the field of African-American literature stands to gain from an archival turn that can challenge monolithic definitions of race-as-resistance. What comes after African-American literature? Gifford ... highlights the richness of material and authors yet to be discovered and reconsidered, urging us to question our assumptions about just what constitutes the field.” 

—Glenda Carpio, American Literary History  

“Pimping Fictions deftly shows the scholarly significance of the early ‘street lit’ authors by decoding their profound artistry while giving insight to the culture that gave it birth.”

—Ice-T

“It's time for the black literati to recognize that the growth and popularity of black crime fiction is deeply linked to the increased presence of prison culture in contemporary African-American life. And it is time to recognize that the genre functions not just as popular entertainment, but as a political and artistic response to the treacherous conditions of America's newest racial caste system: also known as the criminal justice system.”

—Clark Cooke, The Los Angeles Review of Books