Bobby Seale: Eldridge was just a pure anarchist. He wanted to pull that Bakunin b***s*** off, you know what I mean?
I mean, to show you what I’m talking about, Eldridge put out a pamphlet called “Catechism of a Revolutionary”-this is after that shoot-out situation. This is a Black Panther Party Ministry of Information pamphlet. I had not read this ****, OK? I did not know it was all Bakunin, the 1800s anarchist.
And Marlon Brando called me up, he said, “Bobby! I’m not going to send you any more money.” Because Brando would give me money. I guess he must have donated ten grand to me. But he says, “I’m not gonna work with you guys any more. You’re running around telling people to kill their mother and father for the revolution. That ain’t right.”
I said, “We don’t do any such g**d*** thing, what the hell’s wrong with you, Marlon?”
“Here on page so-and-so!” “Of what?” He says, “Your ‘Catechism of a Revolutionary’!”
So I says, “Rosemary, hand me that out of my briefcase.” I had the thing in my briefcase for two months and never read the damn thing because I’m busy, I’m organizing too much. So I got on page so-and-so, and he’s reading, “Kill their mothers and...” and I says, “Damn, I’m sorry, man...”
He says, “OK, I’ll see you, bye”-click. So I lost my funding source because of Eldridge Cleaver’s bull.
Later in life, I’m really taking the time to look at this and put two and two together. When I go back to speaking with Eldridge in 1992, we got a chance to get in various conversations. So I’m asking Eldridge, you had “Catechism of a Revolutionary.” I remember you called Martin Luther King a nonviolent fool. Now you’re a born-again Christian on the other side of the fence. So when Little Bobby Hutton was killed, were you operating from the standpoint of “Catechism of a Revolutionary”? He said, yeah, I was just stupid, I just thought we had to do something, boom boom boom.
Interestingly, Eldridge Cleaver became a Christian and a conservative and Bobby Seale became a cookbook writer.