At the height of my collegiate career, I would read one book and one play each week, writing essays for each.  I became engulfed in literature; its theory, its criticisms, its style, and its experience.  The texts were diverse in origin, setting, and form: from many countries, written as prose and poetry.  …As such, I had not picked up a book since.

It is in that context, and no other, that I stumbled upon an old paperback: a 1970 print of SOUL ON ICE, by Eldridge Cleaver, a formative leader of the Black Panther Party.

I will consider publishing my full essay on the text in the future, but for now, all I will say is that SOUL ON ICE is a required reading for anyone striving to better understand the context, contemporary history, and visions of civil rights causes in our country.

I usually only include citations in full essays, but here are a few of many favorite quotations found in SOUL ON ICE:

In America, when everything else fails, they call out the police.

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The world of today was fashioned yesterday.  What is involved here, what is being decided right now, is the shape of power in the world of tomorrow.

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The price of hating other human beings is loving oneself less.

SOUL ON ICE is a must read, written for times past, appropriate in times present, and applicable to times to come.