April 6, 1968

Wabbaseka (Jefferson County) native Eldridge Cleaver, one of the best-known and most recognizable symbols of African-American rebellion in the 1960s as a leader of the Black Panther Party, was wounded and arrested in a Black Panther shootout with police. After a judge ordered him released from prison two months later, Cleaver undertook a series of lectures at the University of California at Berkeley and ran for president as the candidate of the Peace and Freedom Party. In the 1970s, he became a born-again Christian and later an active member of the Republican Party.