SOURCE: "Eldridge Cleaver, Black Panther Who Became G.O.P. Conservative, Is Dead at 62," in The New York Times, May 2, 1998, p. B8.

[In the following obituary, Kifner details Cleaver's literary career and traces the achievements and disappointments of his life.]

Eldridge Cleaver, whose searing prison memoir Soul on Ice and leadership in the Black Panther Party made him a symbol of black rebellion in the turbulent 1960's, died yesterday in Pomona, Calif., at the age of 62.

A spokesman for the Pomona Valley Hospital Center, Leslie Porras, declined to provide the cause of death or the reason Mr. Cleaver was in the hospital at the request of his family.

In the black leather coat and beret the Panthers wore as a uniform, Mr. Cleaver was a tall, bearded figure who mesmerized his radical audiences with his fierce energy, intellect and often bitter humor.

"You're either part of the problem...