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20.
Eldridge Cleaver Welcome Here.
No place (SF): The International Committee for Cleaver’s Defense, no date (c. December 1968). Offset poster, printed in black on off-white paper stock. 56x43.3cm.
Illustrated with a large b/w photograph of Eldridge Cleaver, with caption in bold lettering below stating “Eldridge Cleaver Welcome Here”, and an invitation in smaller lettering to “Hang this Poster in your Window to let Eldridge know that your Home is also his Home and that he has found a Place of Refuge in what looks like a Long Flight from Injustice.”
The poster’s appearance coincided with Cleaver’s arrest in Miami Beach, where he was being held for extradition to California, and before he jumped bail to flee to Cuba. Underground and radical papers printed a similar poster with the same message and asked their readers to hang it up in a conspicuous place to show support for him. One of the papers, The Fifth Estate, reported in its December 26 issue that “California authorities are confused by reports that Cleaver has been arrested in 109 other communities and three foreign countries. Police in such widely flung cities as Boston, New York, Chicago, and Elk Falls, Idaho, are deluging the San Francisco police with telegrams maintaining that they have one, and in some cases, ‘two, three, many’ Eldridge Cleavers under lock and key… Early yesterday evening about 350 Eldridge Cleavers descended on San Francisco State College where they began occupying buildings. They brought with them 47 cartons of Cleaver masks to be given students and vowed to ‘Cleaverize’ the college by dawn… President-elect Nixon is reported to be having a custom-made Cleaver mask prepared for him ‘just in case.’ ”
Two short, closed tears to left margin, with some associated creasing; two, very faint horizontal creases; o/w Near Fine.
