The Asia-Pacific Journal | Japan Focus Volume 13 | Issue 13 | Number 3 | Mar 30, 2015

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Juche in the United States: The Black Panther Party’sRelations with North Korea, 1969-1971 アメリカにおけるチュチェ（主体性）思想　ブラック・パンサー党と北朝鮮、1969-1971

Benjamin Young

Kim Il Sung, Juche. BPP leader Eldridge Cleaver wrotethe introduction for this book, which is now featuredin the international friendship museum in NorthKorea.

Abstract

In 1969, the Black Panther Party (BPP)established a relationship with the NorthKorean leadership that was based upon theprinciple of self-reliance (under the rubric ofthe Juche ideology), the transnational goal of

Third World revolution, and a mutualantagonism toward American interventionaround the world. Although the U.S.government forbade its citizens from travellingto North Korea, BPP leader Eldridge Cleaveralong with other Panthers bypassed travelrestrictions and visited North Korea to joinanti-imperialist journalist conferences in 1969and 1970. In North Korea, officially known asthe Democratic People's Republic of Korea(DPRK), the Panthers found a new ideology anda government that was critical of the U.S.government. The Panthers established analliance with North Korean leaders who theyrecognized as an independent force within theworld communist movement. They believedthat the "Black colony" inside the United Statescould learn from the DPRK's self-reliant stancein political, economic, and cultural matters.This study adds to recent scholarship on theglobal influence of the BPP and opens a newfield of inquiry, as the BPP-North Koreanrelationship has not been analyzed in-depth.

Introduction

While the Cold War is commonly defined as anideological war between the forces ofcapitalism and communism, frequently ignoredwithin this Manichean view of the conflict areagents from the Third World.1 As historian VijayPrashad asserts, the Third World was not aplace but a project that called for economicdevelopment, nonalignment, and an end tocolonialism.2 In the late 1960s, politicalradicalism inside the United States had adistinctive Third World dimension. Anti-colonial

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revolutions in Asia, Africa, and Latin Americacaptivated U.S. radicals while the Americanrole in the Vietnam War enraged them. Theiconic image of the Argentine Marxist-Leninistrevolutionary Che Guevara adorned the shirtsof young radicals while the chant, "Ho, Ho, HoChi Minh, Viet Cong is going to win," could beheard across many college campuses. The late1960s to early 1970s represented the peak ofThird World solidarity inside the United Statesand some radicals looked to Asia, Africa, andLatin America as an alternative to U.S. andSoviet world dominance.

Eldridge Cleaver and Kim Il Sung on the cover of TheBlack Panther.

The Black Panther Party was an importantplayer in the ranks of this newly formed Third

World-oriented American left and depicted thestruggle for black self-determination as part ofthis global project. BPP member KathleenCleaver explains, "From its inception, the BPPsaw the conditions of blacks within aninternational context, for it was the same racistimperialism that people in Africa, Asia, andLatin America were fighting against that wasvictimizing blacks in the United States."3 ThePanthers considered urban Black America apart of the Third World as many of thesecommunities struggled for the same basicfreedoms and resources as people in Africa,Asia, and Latin America.4 The Panthers alsolooked to prominent Third World figures suchas Frantz Fanon, Mao Zedong, Fidel Castro,Che Guevara, Ho Chi Minh, and North Koreanleader Kim Il Sung for revolutionary guidance.In 1969, the BPP established its internationalsector and reached out to many Third Worldnations for support. In particular, the BPPidentified revolutionary Asia as a powerfulantithesis to the racist and capitalist West.

During the Vietnam War era, many Americanradicals deemed the North Vietnamese and theVietcong the primary force of resistance to U.S.imperialism. They were the anti-colonialfreedom fighters with which they identified.5

Cuba, with its geographic proximity to the U.Sand reputation as a fierce critic of the U.S. anda revolutionary bastion in the Westernhemisphere, also attracted many Americanradicals. Above all, the People's Republic ofChina and Mao Zedong's Cultural Revolutioncaptivated American radicals in the late 1960sand early 1970s. As a nation that offered analternative brand of revolution, China's radicaltake on Marxist-Leninist theory and solidaritywith the black freedom struggle reverberatedin the American radical community. Mao'swritings, including The Little Red Book,became the preferred revolutionary doctrinefor many radicals.6 In contrast to Vietnam,China, and Cuba, North Korea receivedrelatively little attention in U.S. radical circlesin the late 1960s. The Panthers uniquely forged

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a close alliance with North Korea, theDemocratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK).The BPP's Minister of Information EldridgeCleaver "discovered" Kim Il Sung and NorthKorean communism after a 1969 trip toPyongyang for an anti-imperialist journalistconference.7 Cleaver claimed that the"Motherland of Marxism-Leninism in our era"was the DPRK.8

North Korean poster championing Juche as anideology for revolutionaries of all races andnationalities.

Eldridge Cleaver was particularly drawn to theNorth Korean leadership's adaptation ofMarxism-Leninism in the form of the Jucheideology (generally defined as self-reliance),the country's economic success in the 1960s,and its opposition to U.S. imperialism around

the world, a position honed in the Korean War.9

Although Huey Newton was arguably the mostimportant leader of the BPP, Black Powerscholar Peniel Joseph argues that the Panthers"would reflect Cleaver's vision as much as, ifnot more than Newton's."10 After his returnfrom North Korea, Cleaver spread the news ofhis "discovery" within the BPP chapter inOakland, California and its internationalsection, based in Algiers, Algeria. Cleaver wasthe editor of the BPP's official organ, The BlackPanther, which featured numerous articles on"the People's Korea" and Kim Il Sung after his1969 trip.11 With Cleaver as the driving force ofthis alliance, the BPP depicted the DPRK as aThird World model of modernity and autonomyas well as a "socialist paradise" that Americacould one day aspire to become afterrevolution.12 Eldridge Cleaver would often usethe Chinese proverb – "the enemy of yourenemy is your friend" – to describe the BPP'salliance with the North Korean leadership andtheir mutual criticisms of U.S. imperialism.13

Cleaver and the Panthers who supported hisvision were not pawns of the North Koreanregime but calculating revolutionaries whoviewed the alliance with North Korea as ameans to protest against the U.S. governmentand strengthen their own position both withinthe BPP and on the international scene.14

Throughout the Cold War, American leaderspresented themselves as agents of freedom anddemocracy abroad. However, the BPP andother black radicals attacked the U.S.government for violating the basic humanrights of African Americans. Thus, NorthKorea's connection to the BPP, an organizationfighting racial discrimination within the UnitedStates, exposed the hypocrisy of Americandemocracy and challenged the notion of theUnited States as the leader of the "Free World."

The BPP-North Korean relationship thatCleaver forged was predicated on strategic self-interest and a common ideological commitmentto autonomy, self-reliance, and adjusting

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Marxism-Leninism to one's own conditions.15 Byillegally traveling to North Korea and formingan alliance with its leadership, the Pantherslaid claim to being revolutionary diplomats whorepresented the "black colony" of the UnitedStates and directly challenged the U.S. state'sauthority by usurping its exclusive right toconduct foreign affairs.16 As historian Nikhil PalSingh argues, the BPP mimicked the policies ofstate power (such as policing and setting upwelfare programs in poor urban blackcommunities, and pursuing diplomatic relationswith foreign governments) as a way tochallenge the state's presumed exclusivecontrol of these activities and "the state's ownreality principle."17 While the U.S. governmenthas never diplomatically recognized the DPRK,the Panthers regarded and openly spoke ofPyongyang as the legit imate Koreangovernment and South Korea as a "YankeeColony."

The writings of Kim Il Sung were regularly reprintedin The Black Panther newspaper.

This is the first comprehensive account of thealliance formed between the BPP and NorthKorea and contributes to recent scholarship onthe Third World dimensions of the BPP and theinternational approach of the organization.18

Scholars of the Black Power movement, such asYohuru Williams, Peniel Joseph, Nikhil Singh,Sean Malloy, Joshua Bloom and Waldo Martin,have done important work on the BPP's effortsto become an international organization thatconnected issues affecting black Americanswith those affecting other non-white peoplearound the world.19 As Peniel Joseph illustratesin his book, Waiting 'Til the Midnight Hour: ANarrative History of Black Power in America,liberation struggles in the Third World

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captivated black radicals and obscured thenational boundaries of the global struggleagainst white supremacy. Temporally, the warin Vietnam and anticolonial independencemovements in Africa coincided with the civilrights era in America. As revolutionaries fromthe streets of Oakland to the jungles ofSoutheast Asia came face-to-face withAmerican imperialism, the local, national, andinternational forces of anticolonialism andantiracism created a globalized discourse andcritique of American power. Sean Malloyargues that Eldridge Cleaver was the mainarchitect of this new discourse for the BPP,which "blended Third World symbols andrhetoric, a loosely Marxist economic analysis,and a distinctive verbal and visual styleinfluenced by the urban argot of the 'brotherson the block.'"20 As Yohuru Williams explains,the African American freedom struggle'sidentification with Third World liberationmovements, particularly the war in Vietnam,forced American military officials to take theBlack Power movement seriously, as theyworried about growing militancy amongst blacksoldiers.21 The BPP's influence went beyond theinner cities of America as the organizationinspired similar groups to emerge in Israel,New Zealand, and India.22

The Panthers also looked across the globe forrevolutionary literature and ideologies. BPPmembers read Mao's Little Red Book and soldcopies of it on the Berkeley campus.23 AfterCleaver's enthusiasm for Maoism waned, helooked to the North Korean ideology of Jucheand sought to apply it to the unique situation ofAfrican Americans in the United States. PenielJoseph explains, "Influenced by what he viewedas the successful application of Marxist theoryto indigenous movements in China and Korea,Cleaver proposed adopting a vision of classstruggle that intimately considered AfricanAmerican experiences and the long history ofracial subordination that confoundedconventional Marxist rhetoric and practice."24

Yohuru Williams would claim that the BPP

"stood at the forefront of the worldwidefreedom struggle against imperialism" on thebasis of their reinterpretation of criminalactivities in the United States as revolutionaryacts and the establishment of friendly relationswith revolutionary governments in the ThirdWorld, such as China and North Korea.25

This article draws upon sources such as NorthKorean newspapers, The Black Panthernewspaper, the personal papers of EldridgeCleaver, and his wife Kathleen Cleaver'sunpublished memoir that details her time livingin the DPRK in 1970. The Black Panthernewspaper is one of the primary outlets todetail the BPP-North Korean relationship. FromOctober 1969 to January 1971, fifty-seven outof sixty-nine issues of The Black Pantherfeatured some aspect of the BPP's alliance withNorth Korea.26 Kathleen Cleaver's memoir andEldridge Cleaver's diaries, letters, andhandwritten and typed notes from his two tripsto North Korea in 1969 and 1970 make itpossible to explore the BPP-North Koreanrelationship in much greater depth andcontextualize the BPP-North Korean alliance.27

To capture the North Korean perspective onthis relationship, I primarily look to articlesfrom The Pyongyang Times, since it contains anabundant amount of material on North Korea'ssupport of Third World movements and theBPP in the late 1960s to early 1970s. I alsoutilize materials from the Woodrow WilsonCenter 's North Korea Internat ionalDocumentation Project (NKIDP), a digitalarchivethat gathers newly declassifieddocuments onNorth Korea from its formercommunist allies.

North Korea and the Third World

The North Korean leadership and i tspropagandists, from the mid-1960s to themid-1970s, represented the DPRK as "thevanguard of the Third World, anti-Americanrejectionist front" in addition to claiming solegovernance of the entire Korean peninsula.28

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The DPRK presented i ts struggle forreunification as "identical with the struggle ofThird World peoples for independence andcompletely compatible with 'proletarianinternationalism.'"29 The North Korean leadersand propagandists' portrayal of their country asa model of self-sufficiency and postcolonialdevelopment gained significant followersthroughout the Third World. North Koreadirectly aided some of its Third World allies byproviding military training and assistance. TheBPP's attraction to North Korea grew out of theDPRK leadership's efforts to project the nationas a Third World model. North Korean poster featuring a North

Korean revolutionary, backed by comradesfrom the Third World, striking down theAmerican imperialists from the Koreanpeninsula.North Korean cartoon features ThirdWorld revolutionaries dismembering a U.Simperialist.

Given the present day reality of North Korea asan isolated and impoverished nation, it mayseem absurd that the nation could ever havebeen perceived as a Third World model worthyof emulation. However, from the early 1960s tothe mid-1970s, North Korea was moreprosperous than South Korea and became anindustrial power in the communist bloc.30 In1965, Joan Robinson, the notable Britisheconomist, described the North's economicsuccess as a "Korean Miracle" and argued thatSouth Koreans should be able to choose whichpart of Korea- the prosperous North or theimpoverished South- they wanted to live in.31

Political scientist Victor Cha explains that, "Forthe first thirty years after the establishment oftwo Koreas, the U.S. Central IntelligenceAgency estimated that North Korean GNP percapita outstripped that of the South."32

In addition to North Korea's economicdevelopment, Third World revolutionaries werealso attracted to the DPRK because the nationsuccessfully fought off two imperialismsdefeating the Japanese colonialists and then

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fighting the United States to a standstill in theKorean War, albeit with the critical support ofChina and the Soviet Union. As EldridgeCleaver saw it, the North Koreans defeatedJapan, "the monstrous, imperialist force ofAsia," and were "the first to bring the U.S.imperialists trembling to their knees."33 Coreleaders of North Korea were guerilla fighters inthe 1930s who participated in the anti-Japaneseresistance movement in Manchuria. Therevolutionary credentials of these guerillafighters, united around the leadership of Kim IlSung, eventually earned them high rankingpositions in North Korea alongside Sovietadvisors. Two years after the official foundingof North Korea in 1948, the Korean War beganand the North Korean leadership experiencedfirsthand the power of the U.S. war machine asthe United States dropped 635,000 tons ofbombs and 32,557 tons of napalm in Koreaduring the war. In comparison, the UnitedStates dropped 503,000 tons of bombs in thewhole Pacific Theater during World War II.According to Bruce Cumings, "at least 50percent of eighteen out of the North's twenty-two major cities were obliterated."34 The NorthKorean state appealed to many Third Worldrevolutionaries as the nation had literally risenfrom a guerilla struggle in the mountains ofManchuria and the ashes of the Korean War.Kim Il Sung's revolutionary credentials andexperiences confirmed his commitment to anti-imperialism, anti-colonialism, and anti-Americanism.

The North Korean leaders supported the ThirdWorld movement in symbolic and material waysin the 1960s and 1970s. In 1969, January 3-10was proclaimed in the DPRK as "the week ofinternational solidarity for supporting thenational-liberation struggle of the Asian,African, and Latin American peoples."35 In1976, Kim Il Sung explained his theory of aunified Third World movement. He stated, "Thenewly emerging forces in Asia, Africa, andLatin America must confront the imperialists'strategy of destruction one by one with the

strategy of unity; they must not only solidlyunite politically but closely cooperateeconomically and technologically as well."36 TheNorth Korean government went a step furtherby training two thousand guerilla fighters fromtwenty-five countries from the mid-1960s to thelate 1980s.37 Most notably, members of theJapanese Red Army, Palestinian LiberationOrganization, and the Official Irish RepublicanArmy received training in North Korea.38

However, members of the BPP most likely didnot partake in guerilla training during theirvisits to the DPRK.39

North Korean mass gymnastics event promotingChajusong (po l i t ica l independence) andNonalignment.

One of the major reasons why the NorthKorean government supported foreignrevolutionaries is "national solipsism" or thebelief that the Korean peninsula is the center ofthe world.40 As Bruce Cumings suggests, NorthKorea's "national solipsism" is similar to theMiddle Kingdom worldview of ancient China.41

In funding and tra ining Third Worldrevolutionaries, the North Korean leadershipsought to position itself as a major force forworld revolution. As the North Korean statenews agency stated in 1978, "The fame of theKorean Revolution is widely known to the worldacross the borderline of Korea; it is a beacon ofhope, an example of heroism and a greatinspiration for all the peoples who wantliberation and political independence."42 Thus,the North Korean leadership's support offoreign revolutionaries helped on the domestic

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front as the image of peoples of all races andnationalities visiting North Korea reinforcedthe portrayal of the DPRK as a paradise andKim Il Sung as a world leader. The Korea-centered worldview of the DPRK leadershipwas rooted in the expectation that foreignerswho enjoyed its support would revere Kim IlSung and extol the brilliance of the DPRK'ssocialist system. Thus, it was a two-way street.As part of the DPRK's "national solipsism," itsleaders believed that revolutionariesthroughout the world looked to Kim Il Sung forguidance and saw the Korean Revolution as aguide to follow. During the Cultural Revolution,specifically the period 1966-1969, NorthKorean leaders "refuted Chinese premier ZhouEnlai's claim that China had become the centerof world revolution."43 In 1967, Kim Il Sungordered the Chinese government to take downpropaganda at the North Korean embassy thatproclaimed Mao Zedong as "the leader of thepeoples of the entire world." The Chinesegovernment refused, explaining "that theywould observe the laws of the DPRK which theylike and would not observe those which theydid not like."44 While criticizing their Chinesecounterparts as "dogmatists" during theCultural Revolution, North Korean leadersbranded Soviet leaders as "revisionists" due totheir de-Stalinization campaign in themid-1950s. As a 1963 article from the RodongSinmun, the official organ of the KoreanWorker's Party, states, "Some people [referringto the Soviet leadership] are deviating fartherfrom the principles of Marxism-Leninism andproletarian internationalism and being boggeddeep in the mire of revisionism."45 NorthKorea's ideological independence from Chinaand the Soviet Union attracted the Panthersand other Third World revolutionaries.

Despite championing national independenceand radical self-reliance, North Korea's postwarreconstruction and rapid industrializationrested in part on massive Soviet, Chinese andEast European aid. According to Victor Cha,North Korea received over $1.65 billion in aid

from the Soviet Union and China in the 1950s.46

The North Koreans welcomed this assistancefrom their socialist allies but were reluctant toadmit that their rapid postwar reconstructionwas due in part to foreign aid.47 A 1960 reportfrom the Hungarian Embassy in North Korea tothe Hungarian Foreign Ministry in Budapestexplains, "Comrade Puzanov (Sovietambassador) said that the Soviet Union doesnot need constant expressions of gratitude forits help but the Korean comrades are displayingtoo 'modest' behavior concerning theirassistance, and they try to hush it up."48 TheCzechoslovakian ambassador to the DPRK wasbaffled by North Korea's refusal to properlythank its socialist allies for their assistance inrebuilding the country. The ambassador"remarked that any bourgeois economist caneasily calculate that the DPRK was unable toreach its achievements on its own, and it issimilarly unable to provide the economic aid itrecently offered to South Korea from its ownresources."49 In 1958, a Hungarian diplomatstated, "The Korean leaders do not appreciatesufficiently the help China gave to them duringthe Korean War and after the war."50 NorthKorea's supposed independence was attractiveto Third World revolutionaries who appear tohave been unaware of the role of Soviet-blocaid in North Korea's recovery and development.

North Korean poster showing that peoples of all racesand nationalities, Third World and First World, regardKim Il Sung and Juche ideology as a beacon of hope.

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Hoping to spur a new international order basedon mutual ass istance amongst smal lpostcolonial nations, the North Koreanleadership championed Third Worldism as arevolutionary path to socialist modernity in the1970s and 1980s. During a Korean Workers'Party meeting in 1986, Kim Il Sung emphasizedThird World economic cooperation, statingthat, faced with "the threat of ever-worseninghunger and disease, the developing countriesought to pool their efforts and support andcooperate with each other." Kim later added,"If the non-aligned countries and developingcountries wage a vigorous struggle together toestablish a new fair international economicorder, the developed countries will have tocomply, in the long run, with the demands ofthe developing countries whether they like it ornot."51 In order to assist anti-colonial struggles,the DPRK allocated significant foreign aid anddiplomatic resources to Third World countries.This placed a significant burden on NorthKorea's economy. A former member of theNorth Korean elite, Kang Myong-do stated "thatexcessive aid to Third World countries hadcaused an actual worsening of North Korea'salready serious economic problems" in the1980s.52

Kim Il Sung shaking hands with Third Worldrevolutionary Che Guevara, who visited North Koreatwice in the early 1960s.

To a certain degree, the North Korean brandingof their nation as a Third World model appearsto have worked. Numerous Asian, African, andLatin American nations established closerelations with the North and found its flexibleuse of Marxism-Leninism and the Jucheideology enticing. In particular, the Cubanleadership formed a close relationship withNor th Korea based on Th i rd Wor ldinternationalism and a commitment tosupporting anti-colonial guerilla strugglesaround the world. Che Guevara, a leadingproponent of Third Worldism, visited NorthKorea and met with Kim Il Sung twice in theearly 1960s.53 In the fall of 1960, Guevaravisited the DPRK both to see an example of"Asian socialism" and sell Cuban sugar to hisKorean comrades.54 On January 6, 1961,Guevara appeared on Cuban state televisionand discussed his trip. He praised North Koreafor its achievements in heavy industry.55 Justweeks before the Bay of Pigs invasion on April17, 1961, Guevara spoke with the independentjournalist I.F. Stone. Stone commented, "Chespoke with enthusiasm of what he had seen inhis grand tour of the Soviet bloc. Whatimpressed him most was the reconstruction ofNorth Korea and the quality of its industrialoutput, here was a tiny country resurrectedfrom the ashes of American bombardment andinvasion."56 Eighteen years later, EldridgeCleaver's comments on North Korea's rapidpostwar reconstruction would echo whatGuevara had said. Cuban leader Fidel Castrowas also enthusiastic about North Koreansocialism and called Kim Il Sung "one of themost eminent, outstanding, heroic leaders ofsocialism." According to a Russian archivaldocument, Raul Castro, Fidel's brother andsecond secretary of the Cuban Politburo,visited the DPRK in 1966 and emphasized theclose friendship of the Cuban Communist Partyand Korean Workers' Party at a mass rally inPyongyang. Raul Castro announced to theNorth Korean crowd, "If anyone wants to find

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out the opinion of Comrade Fidel Castro aboutthe fundamental issues of modern times thenhe can ask Comrade Kim Il Sung about this."57

North Korea's Third World diplomacy was mostnoticeable in Africa. Kim Il Sung hoped to swaymany newly independent countries to supportthe North Korean cause of reunification and itsposition in the United Nations.58 In October1958, Guinea became the first sub-SaharanAfrican nation to establish diplomatic ties withPyongyang, and Algeria established diplomaticrelations with the DPRK earlier that year.59

Other sub-Saharan African nations waited untilthe early 1970s to develop diplomatic relationswith the DPRK, when it was possible torecognize both South Korea and North Korea.60

In the 1960s and 1970s, many Africangovernment officials and leaders who visitedthe DPRK praised North Korea's postcolonialand postwar reconstruction and sought tomodel their nations on Kim Il Sung's brand ofsocialism. An Ethiopian diplomat who visitedNorth Korea in 1976 remarked, "The politicalindependence and economic self-reliance,which is resolutely defended by the Koreanpeople, is an excellent model for the socialistEthiopian people."61 Other delegations fromAfrica also hoped to learn from North Korea'ssocialist development. A Mozambicandelegation visited North Korea in 1978 "to takenote of the Korean experience regarding themethods and paths used by the DPRK to buildthe socialist society."62 In addition, Malian heado f s ta te Moussa Traore "ca l l ed theachievements and experiences of the DPRK amodel for the developing countries."63 In the1960s and 1970s many Third World leaders,particularly Africans, looked to the DPK andsought a political system that was distinct fromWestern and Soviet styles of rule. North Korea,a small postcolonial Third World country, withits strong leadership, a disciplined populace,rapid postwar reconstruction, and an ideologycentered on self-reliance was an alluring modelto many African authorities.

A North Korean poster championing Che Guevara.

The North Korean leaders welcomed supportfrom Third World peoples (which included theBPP) who denounced U.S. imperialism andproclaimed the DPRK the proper government ofthe "40 million Heroic Korean People." FromNorth Korea's perspective, due to itscompetition with South Korea for votes in theUnited Nations and recognition as the trueKorean state, the BPP was a useful ally. In the1960s and 1970s the leaders of the DPRK andthe BPP viewed themselves as vital members ofa global project highlighting self-reliance anddevelopment.

Globalizing the Struggle

The BPP's international section, led by Cleaver,embarked on a global mission to find arevolutionary ideology, that the Panthers couldadapt to "the black colony" inside the UnitedStates, and reliable allies for their struggle inthe United States. In so doing, the BPP'sinternational section directly challenged theU.S. state and the diplomatic powers that itpossessed. The North Koreans treated the BPPrepresentatives as foreign diplomats and thisappealed to the Party's sense of itself as aninternational organization that represented theinterests of urban Black America.

Following Eldridge Cleaver's abortive efforts to

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build an alliance with Fidel Castro in 1968-69,Algiers became the most important site of theBPP's internationalist efforts, where theydeveloped a relationship with North Koreanofficials.64 In her memoir, Kathleen Cleaverexplains that Algiers had become a haven forr e v o l u t i o n a r i e s w h o w e r e f o r c e dunderground.65 Algiers had also been the homeof Frantz Fanon, the famous anti-colonialistrevolutionary, whose work Wretched of theEarth was required reading for BPP members.Eldridge Cleaver admitted that beyond Fanon,he knew very little about Algeria before goingthere.66 In Algiers, Eldridge Cleaver, his wifeKathleen, and some two dozen members of theB P P e s t a b l i s h e d a b a s e f o r B P Pinternationalism where they met officials froma wide range of revolutionary movements andsocialist nations.67 The BPP's internationalplatform had caught the attention of NorthKorean officials. As Kathleen Cleaver explains,"Back in A lg iers , the Nor th Koreanrepresentatives became the closest associatesof the Black Panther Party, for they wereanxious to have a vehicle for disseminating theideology of Kim Il Sung within the UnitedStates."68 The Panthers reprinted many of KimIl Sung's speeches in their newspaper and hisbooks became required reading in theirpolitical education classes. The BPP from thefall of 1969 through the winter of 1971identified the teachings of Kim Il Sung, notMao's writings or The Little Red Book, as therevolutionary doctrine most applicable to theBPP's situation. 69 Eldridge Cleaver explained,"After careful investigation on the internationalscene, it is our considered opinion that it isnone other than Comrade Kim Il Sung who isbrilliantly providing the most profound Marxist-Leninist analysis, strategy, and tactical methodfor the total destruction of imperialism and theliberation of the oppressed peoples in ourtime."70 The DPRK leadership viewed thealliance with the BPP as a means to promotethe works of Kim Il Sung in the United States,while the BPP gained a sense of internationalsupport for its revolutionary line.

Algiers served as a pseudo-foreign embassy ofthe BPP. The Panthers passed the i rpublications to fellow revolutionaries andembassies of socialist-aligned nations. ThePanthers were invited to festivals, embassydinners, and conferences much like diplomaticofficials from nations. For example, at the Pan-African Cultural Festival held in Algiers in July1969, the Panthers met North Korea'sambassador to Algeria who invited EldridgeCleaver and the BPP's Deputy Minister ofDefense Byron Booth to Pyongyang for an anti-imperialist journalist conference. Cleaver andBooth agreed to come to the DPRK becausethey sensed "the Korean people were serious insupporting us because they wanted theAmericans out."71

The BPP-North Korean relationship revolvedaround the anti-imperialist journalistconferences of 1969 and 1970. On September11, 1969, Eldridge Cleaver and Byron Boothtraveled to Pyongyang for the eight-day"International Conference on Tasks ofJournalism of the Whole World in their Fightagainst U.S. Imperialist Aggression."72 The twoPanthers were to represent "the progressivejournalists of the United States of America."The presence of two radical African Americansrepresenting the United States surely drew theattention of the conference.73

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North Korean inflected paean to Juche in The BlackPanther.

Although the North Korean ambassador toChina courted Huey Newton, Eldridge Cleaverwas the BPP leader who was most disposed tothe North Korean relationship.74 Cleaver wasenamored with North Korea's blending ofnationalism, communism, and self-reliance intothe Juche ideology, which captivated himduring his 1969 trip to the DPRK. Cleaverexplained that the BPP were Marxist-Leninistswho adapted scientific socialism to theirsituation.7 5 North Korea took the sameapproach with Marxism-Leninism, whichreinforced Cleaver's idea that the Panthersshould not adopt a fore ign ideologyindiscriminately. According to Cleaver, "Jucheis carrying out the Korean Revolution. Juche forus means… to carry out our revolution."76

Cleaver was so enthralled by the North Koreanbrand of communism that he and Li Yuk-Sa,

who may have been a member of Chongryon(an organization of pro-DPRK ethnic Koreansliving in Japan), published their own book ofKim Il Sung's speeches and writings in 1972.Cleaver claimed that the book "must be readand understood by the American people" andmuch of its contents focused on explaining theJuche ideology.77 However, the meaning ofJuche and i t s ro le in shap ing DPRKinternational policy, remains contentious.

Juche, in Bruce Cumings' view, "is reallyuntranslatable; the closer one gets to itsmeaning, the more the meaning slips away." InCumings' view, Juche is "closer to Neo-Confucianism than to Marxism." 78 B.R. Myersfinds Juche a "stodgy jumble of banalities" thatis a smokescreen for North Korea's realideology: paranoid race-based nationalism.79

Bradley K. Martin explains that the broadermeaning of Juche is "putting Korea first."80

Korean studies scholar, Alzo David-Westcontends that "Juche is not a philosophy, but anideology of political justification for thedictatorship of Kim Il Sung."81 HistorianCharles Armstrong observes, "Juche has beenthe most extreme and uncompromisingexpression of national political and economicsovereignty in the world."82 Despite suchdifferences, these scholars agree that theideology was designed to undergird NorthKorean autonomy.

However, for our purposes, searching for adeeper meaning of Juche is unnecessary as theBPP was specifically attracted to the Jucheideology's focus on self-reliance and the NorthKorean leadership's adaptation of Marxism-Leninism to its unique situation as a dividedpost-colonial nation.83 A Black Panther articlefrom February 1970 instructs that, "Brokenwine bottles and hypodermic needles are veryeffective. Pork chop and chicken bones caneven be utilized as weapons. This is 'Juche'relying on what you have, to sustain yourresistance."84 In other words, the Panthersdefined Juche as follows: "Use what you got to

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get what you need."85 To the Panthers, Juchemeant achieving a goal through one's ownefforts.

North Korea's Juche ideology allowed the BPPto criticize the CPUSA for being too devoted tothe Soviet line of Marxism-Leninism (peacefulcoexistence) and perceived the organization asbeing dominated by whites, despite thepresence of African Americans in keyleadership positions.86 According to EldridgeCleaver, the CPUSA challenged the BPP's"right to adopt Marxism-Leninism - we couldonly do it under their good offices. So thisprinciple of Juche, bolstered our own selfassurances." Thus, Cleaver argued that, "Whena cat [referring to a revolutionary] begins toutilize Marxism-Leninism, if he's not careful hecould be made to feel that he's stealingsomething or that he doesn't really have theright to do that, and this sort of takes away thedynamic approach that you need."87 For theBPP, even if the Juche ideology lacked any realweight on its own, it had a purpose in creatingspace between the organization and itsdomestic rivals.

Following Cleaver and Booth's trip to the DPRKin 1969, the North Korean state-run media tooka keen interest in the BPP's activities in theUnited States, because they reinforced theNorth's portrayal of American Imperialism as aglobal evil.88 On January 26, 1970, an article inThe Pyongyang Times explained that the "U.S.imperialist human butchers" and "their reptilepropaganda organs" were "hatching anunpardonable criminal plot to murder BobbySeale, by making a new 'charge' against him."89

According to North Korean propaganda, theU.S. government's suppression of the BPPrepresented the general plight of AfricanAmericans living in a supposedly free society.On July 6, 1970, North Korean propagandistsexplained that the imprisonment of "hundreds"of BPP members "represents a shamelessfascist barbarity against the thirty millionAmerican Negroes and an unbearable,

nefarious challenge to the progressive forces ofthe United States and the revolutionary peoplethe world over."90 Later, on September 23,1970, a North Korean international broadcastin English condemned police raids on localPanther chapters in the United States anddeclared that the "Korean people" will continueto support the BPP's struggle for equality.91

Kim Il Sung even sent the BPP a telegramwishing them success in their "just struggle toabo l i sh the cursed sys tem o f rac ia ldiscrimination of the U.S. imperialists and winliberty and emancipation."92 By covering therepression of the Panthers, which the NorthKorean press called "the most militantvanguard for the class and racial emancipationof the Negroes," the North Korean state-runmedia was able to chal lenge the U.S.government's duplicitous commitment toequality and civil rights for its citizens.

By 1970, it was clear that the BPP had wonNorth Korean support. In late April 1970,Eldridge and Kathleen Cleaver, along with BPPField Marshal Don Cox, who had recentlyarrived in Algiers, were invited to a formaldinner at the North Korean embassy. Duringthe dinner, Eldridge discussed with the NorthKorean ambassador the details of the July 1970anti-imperialist journalist conference. EldridgeCleaver would be taking a delegation of U.S.radical leftists to the conference while hispregnant wife, Kathleen Cleaver, would stay inPyongyang.

The hosting of Kathleen Cleaver indicates ashift in the North Korean leadership'sperception of the BPP. North Korean leadersregarded the BPP as a legitimate political bodythat represented the interests of AfricanAmericans and thus treated Kathleen Cleaveras a dignitary of an allied nation. On June 2,1970, Kathleen and her son, Maceo, arrived inPyongyang. Eldridge Cleaver would later joinher when he arrived with the U.S. delegationfor the 1970 anti-imperialist journalistconference.93 The Korean Women's Democratic

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Union hosted Kathleen Cleaver and sent her toa countryside home on the outskirts ofPyongyang. The home was located at LakeChangsuwon, "where summer houses weremaintained for special government guests."94

By caring for Kathleen Cleaver, the NorthKorean leaders also sent a message to U.S.officials: the victims of U.S. imperialism carefor each other and stand together in theircommon fight. This paralleled EldridgeCleaver's philosophy in the late 1960s thatthose who directly resisted U.S. imperialismwere the most valuable allies. In December1970, Cleaver pronounced, "We find our mostefficacious and useful alliances are with thosepeople who are directly confronted with theaggress ion by the U .S . imper ia l i s tgovernment." 9 5

During the anti-imperialist journalistconferences of 1969 and 1970, the BlackPanthers and their fellow travelers, led byEldridge Cleaver, visited farms and factoriesexemplifying the "workers' paradise," thatsupposedly characterized the DPRK. Despitefeuding with Eldridge Cleaver during the trip,Elaine Brown appreciated what she "saw wasthe genuine development of socialism" in NorthKorea.96 In 1970, the delegation "discovered aclean, efficient, industrialized state whosepopulation was highly disciplined."97 After amonth-long stay, they left North Korea in mid-August. Members of the delegation wereimpressed with what they had seen. 9 8

Demonstrating a continued interest in exposingAmerican racial violence, the North Koreanleadership offered political asylum to inmatesinvolved in the 1971 Attica prison riots. Duringnegotiations between prisoners and the police,the BPP told the inmates that they could livefreely in four countries: North Korea, NorthVietnam, Algeria, or Congo-Brazzaville.99 Thisreinforced North Korea's "national solipsism."If citizens of its most hated enemy werepraising Kim Il Sung, it proved to the NorthKorean leadership that they were building abetter type of socialism.

Nonetheless, at least some of the Panthers whotraveled to the DPRK resented "the subtlebrainwashing and unsubtle racism" of theirNorth Korean hosts.100 Kim Il Sung's personalitycult made the North Koreans seem likeautomatons. As Kathleen Cleaver describes,"The courageous leader of '40 million Koreanpeople' was given credit for every achievementin the country, making every discussion withthe Korean hosts seem to American delegateslike preprogrammed statements."101 So why didthe Panthers champion the DPRK as aparadise? In doing so, they depicted the DPRKas the antithesis to America, which the Partysought to expose as a racist and imperialistnation that failed to provide for its people,carried out racial discrimination across thecountry and abroad, and engaged inimperialistic wars.

North Korean Communism as anAlternative to American Capitalism

In the late 1960s, Oakland, California (thehome of the BPP) and Pyongyang, North Koreaappeared to be polar opposites. As BPP visitorsto Pyongyang perceived it, poverty, crime, andgun violence plagued the streets of Oaklandwhile free education, health care, and a stableeconomy and infrastructure characterizedPyongyang. The boulevards of Pyongyang wereclean and appeared to be violence-free, whilethe streets of Oakland resembled a racially-charged war zone, a quality that had becomecommonplace in many American inner citiesduring this period. Consequently, the NorthKorean model, with the additional appeal thatthe nation confronted the American warmachine, looked attractive to BPP leaders.After his 1969 trip to North Korea, Byron Boothwrote in The Black Panther that, "Being here inthe Democratic People's Republic of Korea islike catching glimpses of the future. It's seeingwhat unity and the correct revolutionaryprogram can create for those intent uponputt ing an end to oppression and theexploitation of man by man."102 In extolling the

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virtues of the DPRK's socialist system, thePanthers were not just protesting the U.S.government's oppression of urban BlackAmerica; they were also envisioning what theyhoped would occur in their own communities.The Panthers produced calculated images ofNorth Korea and its socialist system. Whileintegral to the examination of this relationship,the BPP's images of life in the DPRK did notconvey the reality of life for the majority ofNorth Koreans. While many BPP membersdepicted the DPRK as a socialist model, theywere taken on strict government approvedroutes that maintained the façade of a workers'paradise.

The Panthers emphasized education and theybelieved they found in the North Koreaneducational system with its emphasis on Jucheand national pride, ideas that might be appliedin urban Black America. The BPP held thatthrough education, African Americans couldfinally cut off the chains from their whiteoppressors. In their ten-point program, the BPPstated, "We want education that teaches us ourtrue history and our role in present-daysociety."103 The Panthers started literacycampaigns in inner cities in order to overcomethe trend of illiterate high school graduates.North Korea's educational revolution alluredthe Panthers. North Korean leaders expoundedthat they were the first Asian country to haveeliminated illiteracy.104 When BPP memberElaine Brown visited North Korea in 1970, shereported that each child is provided with a freeeducation "up through what we would call highschool and even college education."105 EldridgeCleaver wrote that due to "the correcteducational policy of Comrade Kim Il Sung,"one hundred universities were created andmore than four million students go to schoolevery day until the "age of labor."106 NorthKorea's educational system emphasized Koreanpride, loyalty to the Kim family, and an anti-colonial worldview, aspects that most likely did

not go unnoticed when Panther membersvisited North Korean schools. In extolling theNorth Korean educational system, the Pantherswere not only protesting the dysfunctionaleducational policies in urban Black America butalso imagining an alternative model ofschooling that they hoped to adopt aftercompleting the "incomplete" Americanrevolution.

Many African Americans, who lived in innercities in the late 1960s and 1970s, were stuckin a vicious cycle of poverty, family breakdown,and disease. Living in unhygienic, crampedconditions and eating an inadequate diet, poorAfrican Americans were susceptible to illness.Those who became sick could not go to work.Many could not afford the medical care in thefew health care facilities located in the blackcommunity. This deplorable situation inspiredthe BPP's creation of programs focused ontreating the nutritional and medical needs ofurban Black America. The Panthers establishedbreakfast programs for schoolchildren andclinics for treating colds and diagnosingtuberculosis, diabetes, sickle cell anemia, andhigh blood pressure.107 The Panthers depictedhealth care as a universal right and stated intheir ten-point platform that health care shouldbe "completely free for all black and oppressedpeople."108

Subsequently, BPP members who traveled toNorth Korea lauded its universal health caresystem, as emblematic of the benefits ofsocialism. According to Brown, every NorthKorean citizen was provided with health care inproper medical care facilities.109 In his notesfrom his 1970 trip to North Korea, EldridgeCleaver explained that after Japanesecolonialism, the child mortality rate had beenreduced by half and the average life spanincreased by twenty years. He was told that alarge part of North Korea's state budget goesto health and hygiene.110 In a letter printed inThe Black Panther, Kathleen Cleaver testifiedto the tremendous medical and childcare that

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she received during her pregnancy in NorthKorea.111 On the surface, North Korea's healthcare system appeared exemplary. However, asNorth Korea scholar Andrei Lankov suggests,even at the best of times, the North's healthcare facilities were plagued with outdatedequipment, limited amounts of medicine, andover crowdedness. Contrary to what Cleaversaid in 1970, the North's health care systemwas also seriously underfunded.112 The BPP'slionization of the North's health care successeswas a weapon to be used in critiquing thehealth disasters experienced in Americanghetto communities. By portraying the DPRK'sheath care system as benevolent andsuccessful, they were pointing out the warpedpriorities and failures of capitalism experiencedin their communities.

The Panthers who visited the DPRK in 1969 and1970 portrayed the North Korean countrysideas vibrant and productive. A stable economywith jobs for all and an infrastructure with safehousing and electricity were portrayed as thebenefits of a socialist society that placed theliving standards of its people as its top priority.Following her 1970 trip to North Korea, BPPmember Elaine Brown wrote that the "theentire (North Korean) countryside haselectricity in all houses" and that "most of thepeople even in the countryside have television."Brown contended that, "The people who live oncooperative farms actually live at a muchhigher living standard than the average personin the United States who would be involved infarming work, or even a worker."113 The groupof American radicals who visited Pyongyang in1970 saw no homeless beggars, no prostitutes,and no hustlers on its streets. Gamblinghouses, cheap bars, rundown houses orapartment buildings were also noticeablyabsent.114 The Panthers represented NorthKorean cities as sites of socialist success. Thestable but basic infrastructure of North Koreancities appealed to Eldridge Cleaver. During his1969 trip to North Korea, Cleaver visited theindustrial city of Hamhung and pronounced

that it was "built for the needs of the people"while in American cities, "technology is highlyadvanced but serves only to exploit and murderpeople, to demean and destroy theirhumanity."115 To Cleaver, American inner citieswere symbols of the excesses of capitalism. IfCleaver and his BPP fellow travelers idealizedNorth Korean urban and rural life, theyunderstood well the plight of African Americansin their communities who struggled to find jobsand decent food, and who lived in rat-infested,dilapidated housing projects. In their ten-pointplatform, the Panthers called for decenthousing and the full employment of AfricanAmericans.116 The general impoverishment thatplagued urban Black America made NorthKorean cities seem to the visitors' attractivemodels for building socialism.

The Panthers did not truly believe North Koreawas "paradise," but the rhetoric served animportant purpose: it highlighted the racialdiscrimination and socioeconomic inequalitieswithin the United States. At a time when innercities of America were overwhelmed withdrugs, crime, and violence, North Korea, atleast on the surface, appeared to be free ofthese problems. Thus, North Koreancommunism appeared to suggest a powerfulcritique of American capitalism.

Conclusion

By 1971, the BPP-North Korean relationshipwas noticeably weakening as no Pantherstraveled to North Korea.117 The primary reasonfor the weakening of its relations with theNorth Korean leadership was the growingisolation of the international section of the BPPeven before the notable Cleaver-Newton "split"of 1971.118 During his time abroad, EldridgeCleaver became estranged from the "on theground" struggle of the BPP in the UnitedStates. As historian Sean Malloy explains, "Bymid-1970, he appears to have been betterversed in the nuances of Juche, Koreanreunification, and the Arab-Israeli Conflict than

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he was with the evolving struggles on thestreets of Oakland, Chicago, or Harlem."119

While Cleaver was leading the internationalsection of the BPP, the Panthers based in theUnited States were emphasizing change at thegrassroots level in the black community, withprograms ranging from community control ofthe local police force to food and healthprograms for the poor and dispossessed.Privately, Cleaver criticized the new emphasison local changes on the grounds that thePanthers were working within the white man'sexploitative system.120 Meanwhile, HueyNewton questioned the direction that Cleaverwas taking The Black Panther newspaper, as itbegan to focus more on the world communistmovement than the struggle at home.121

The BPP's radical stance, and its ability togarner support from socialist nations, above allChina and North Korea, and throughout urbanBlack America, alarmed the FBI. J. EdgarHoover, director of the FBI, branded thePanthers the country's "most dangerous andviolence-prone of all extremist groups" andfocused the actions of the FBI's CounterIntelligence Program (COINTELPRO) onsubverting the BPP.122 Hoover's goal was "todisrupt, discredit and destroy" the BPP.123

COINTELPRO had disastrous effects for thePanthers by fueling the growing distrustbetween its international section and thosebased in the United States when the FBIproduced a series of forged letters between thetwo. The FBI's infiltration program worked andNewton expelled Cleaver and the entireinternational section from the BPP in February1971.124

The BPP was committed to overthrowing theAmerican capitalist system and ending racialdiscrimination but the opposing personalitieswithin the organization coupled withCOINTELPRO destroyed the organization fromwithin. In addition, as Joshua Bloom and Waldo

Martin argue, black radicalism lost much of itsmomentum in the early 1970s as the UnitedStates normalized relations with revolutionarygovernments, African Americans achievedgreater electoral representation, better accessto government employment, more employmentopportunities due to affirmative action, as wellas entrance to elite colleges and universities.The military draft had also been cut as Nixonwound down the war in Vietnam.125 Like otherblack revolutionary organizations, the Pantherslost much of its popular support in the blackcommunity due to the new socioeconomicopportunities being offered to young AfricanAmericans. In the winter of 1971, Newtoninformed the governments of Cuba, NorthKorea, and North Vietnam of Cleaver'sexpulsion from the BPP. This act, together withMao Zedong's welcoming of "Pig Nixon" toBeijing in 1972, deepened Cleaver's increasingresentment of the communist world.126 But bythis time, the romance of China and NorthKorea with the BPP had cooled.

The ending of the BPP-North Koreanrelationship coincided not only with theinternal rift within the BPP but also with theeasing of tensions between the United Statesand China. This suggests that the NorthKoreans may have also been engaging in amini-détente of their own. Richard Nixon's visitto China ended twenty-five years of noncontactbetween the two sides. Perhaps the NorthKorean leadership sensed that the worldcommunist movement was changing and thatan alliance with the BPP hurt its ability to gainAmerican support for ending the Korean Warand moving toward Korean reunification.According to an East German diplomatic wire,the DPRK leadership supported China's hostingof Nixon because he "would not arrive inBeijing as a victor but as a defeated." Inaddition, the Chinese leadership agreed tobring up the "Korean question" in talks with theU.S. president.127 Todor Zhivkov, leader of theBulgarian Communist Party, visited NorthKorea in 1973 and explained to Kim Il Sung

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that peaceful coexistence with the UnitedStates was a "class, internationalist policy."After official talks, Kim Il Sung told Zhivkovthat he supported peaceful coexistence withthe West.128 Thus, it may not have been a one-sided breakup as Cleaver's notes suggest. TheNorth Korean leaders may have also sought topart ways with the BPP and the Newton-Cleaver split provided the perfect opportunityfor doing so. The changing dynamics of theCold War may have hastened the dissolution ofthe BPP-North Korean relationship. By 1972,the international section, based in Algiers, hadpractically dissolved with many membershaving returned to the United States and somehaving fled to other African nations. Eldridgeand Kathleen Cleaver moved to France inJanuary 1973 and returned to the United Statesin 1975.129 Upon his return from exile, EldridgeCleaver transformed from staunch Marxist-Leninist to an evangelical Christian and latercreated his own religion called Christlam,which had a military branch called Guardiansof the Sperm. Kathleen Cleaver divorced herhusband in 1987. Struggling with crack cocaineaddiction in his later years, Eldridge Cleaverdied in 1998. Kathleen Cleaver went back toschool and eventually became a law professorat Yale University.130

The BPP and the North Korean leadership weredrawn to one another in the late 1960s andearly 1970s. The Panthers were fighting tooverthrow the capitalist system on their ownterms. Likewise, North Korean leaders facedthe continued legacy of an unfinished war,American hostility and blockade as they soughtto reunify Korea under the leadership of theDPRK. The Panthers saw urban Black Americaas a colony that was oppressed by the racistAmerican government while the North Koreanleadership and its propagandists depictedSouth Korea as a U.S. colony and puppet state.The Panthers wanted the "pigs" (police) out ofthe inner cities of America so that blackAmericans could live freely, and the NorthKorean leadership wanted the Americans out of

South Korea so that they could reunify theKorean peninsula. While the alliance was short-lived, the BPP-North Korean relationship shedslight on both the international politics of theDPRK and the internationalization of the BPP.

Benjamin R. Young is a PhD student in EastAsian history, George Washington University.First and foremost, the author would like tothank his master's thesis advisors at TheCollege at Brockport, Meredith Roman andTakashi Nishiyama, for helping him developthis paper. The author also thanks GreggBrazinsky, Adam Cathcart, Bruce Cumings,Christine Hong, Chuck Kraus, B.R Myers,James Person, Janet Poole, Mark Selden, BalazsSzalontai, Peter Ward, and Robert Winstanley-Chesters for reading earlier versions of thispaper and offering helpful advice andconstructive feedback. The author can becontacted at benjaminyoung@gwu.edu(https://apjjf.org/mailto:benjaminyoung@gwu.edu)and his webpage can be accessed athttps://gwu.academia.edu/BenjaminRYoung

Recommended citation: Benjamin R. Young,"Juche in the United States: The Black PantherParty 's Relat ions with North Korea,1969-1971", The Asia-Pacifc Journal, Vol. 13,Issue 12, No. 2, March 30, 2015.

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Notes

1 The concept of the "Third World" developed inthe early 1950s and gained prominence afterthe Afro-Asian Conference (better known as the

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Bandung Conference) that took place in 1955.The two Koreas were left out of the BandungConference. These talks gave rise to whatbecame known as the Third World movement.See Vijay Prashad, The Darker Nations: APeople's History of the Third World (New York:New Press, 2008), 41.

2 Prashad, The Darker Nations, xv-xvii.

3 Kathleen Cleaver, "Back to Africa: TheEvolution of the International Section of theBlack Panther Party (1969-1972) in The BlackPanther Party (Reconsidered), ed. Charles E.Jones (Baltimore: Black Classic Press, 1998),216.

4 BPP leader Eldridge Cleaver consideredAfrican Americans "colonial subjects in adecentralized country, dispersed throughoutthe white mother country in enclaves calledblack communities, black ghettos." SeeEldridge Cleaver, Eldridge Cleaver: Post-PrisonWritings and Speeches (New York: RandomHouse, 1969), 140.

5 See Mary Hershberger, Traveling to Vietnam:American Peace Activists and the War(Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press,1998).

6 For works on the Chinese and Cuban allure toU.S. radicals during the 1960s, see Robin D.G.Kelley and Betsy Esch, "Black Like Mao" in AfroAsia: Revolutionary Political and CulturalConnections between African Americans andAsian Americans, eds. Fred Ho and Bill Mullen(Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2008);and Max Elbaum, Revolution in the Air: SixtiesRadicals Turn to Lenin, Mao, and Che (London:Verso, 2002).

7 Although the Panthers were not the onlyAmerican radical leftists who forged ties withthe DPRK, they established the strongestconnection. Other American radical leftistorganizations whose members traveled toNorth Korea during the 1960s and 1970s

include the Communist Party of the UnitedStates (CPUSA), the Youth International Party(Yippies), the Movement for a DemocraticMilitary, the Peace & Freedom Party, thewomen's liberation movement, the SanFrancisco-based Red Guards, the radicalmagazine Ramparts, and the film collective,New York NEWSREEL. Prominent radicalleftist organizations such as the Students for aDemocratic Society (SDS), the StudentNonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC),and the Weather Underground neither sentmembers to North Korea nor showed anyinterest in establishing relations with the NorthKorean government. For a fascinating look at ashort- l ived Pyongyang-funded leftistorganization in New York City, see BrandonGauthier, "The American-Korean Friendshipand Information Center and North KoreanPublic Diplomacy, 1971-1976," Yonsei Journalof International Studies vol . 6, no. 1(Spring/Summer 2014), 151-162.

8 Eldridge Cleaver's Typed Notes on Korea,"September 28 1969, Texas A&M University,Cushing Memorial Library and Archives, TheEldridge Cleaver Collection, 1959-1981.

9 The Korean War entered a period of armisticein 1953, but no peace treaty was signed. Forrecent scholarship on North Korean ideology,see Charles Armstrong, "The Role andInfluence of Ideology," in North Korea inTransition: Politics, Economy, and Society, eds.Kyung-Ae Park and Scott Snyder (Plymouth,UK: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 2013);Rudiger Frank, "Socialist Neoconservatism andNorth Korean Foreign Policy" in NewChallenges of North Korean Foreign Policy, ed.Kyung-Ae Park (New York: Palgrave Macmillan,2010); B.R. Myers, The Cleanest Race: HowNorth Koreans See Themselves and Why ItMatters (Brooklyn, NY: Melville HousePublishing, 2010); and Jae-Jung Suh, ed.,Origins of North Korea's Juche: Colonialism,War, and Development (Plymouth, UK:Lexington Books, 2013).

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10 Peniel Joseph, Waiting 'Til the MidnightHour: A Narrative History of Black Power inAmerica (New York: Henry Holt and Company,LLC, 2006), 178.

11 Cleaver gained fame as a writer due to hiscontroversial book, Soul on Ice. The book,published in 1968, was comprised of writingsfrom his time at Folsom State Prison. In thebook, Cleaver admits to raping black women asa "practice run" before moving on to rapingwhite women. He also launches homophobicremarks at James Baldwin, a prominentAfrican-American novelist and poet. However,S o u l o n I c e a l s o t e l l s o f C l e a v e r ' stransformation from petty marijuana dealer inhis youth to a devoted Marxist-Leninist whobelieved that communism was the only way toeradicate racism around the world. SeeEldridge Cleaver, Soul on Ice (New York:Random House, Inc., 1968).

1 2 In the 1960s and 1970s, North Koreasupported many Third World revolutionariesfighting for independence. For a completeanalysis, see Joseph Bermudez, Terrorism: TheNorth Korean Connection (New York: Taylor &Francis, 1990).

13 Kathleen Cleaver, "Memories of Love andWar" (Unpublished Memoir, 2011), 559. I amgrateful to the author for sharing her memoirwith me.

14 By 1971, the Panthers were effectively splitinto two different camps. The Huey Newton-ledcamp emphasized local changes and socialwelfare programs, such as the free breakfastfor children program, in American inner cities.Cleaver's faction focused on ties with socialist-oriented Third World nations and advocatedguerilla warfare on the streets of whiteAmerica, or as Cleaver called it "Babylon," inorder to defeat the white bourgeois powerstructure. See Elaine Brown, A Taste of Power:A Black Woman's Story (New York: PantheonBooks, 1992), 218-239; and Sean Malloy,

"Uptight in Babylon: Eldridge Cleaver's ColdWar," Diplomatic History 37, no. 3 (2013):538-571.

15 I adopt Martin Seliger's arguments thatpolitics and ideology are inseparable and thatideology is "a set of ideas by which men posit,explain, and justify the ends and means oforganized social action, irrespective of whethersuch action aims to preserve, amend, uproot, orrebuild a given social order." See MartinSeliger, Ideology and Politics (London: Allenand Unwin, 1976), 14.

16 Nihil Pal Singh, "The Black Panthers and the'Undeveloped Country' of the Left," in TheBlack Panther Party Reconsidered, ed. CharlesE. Jones (Baltimore: Black Classic Press, 1998),57-108. In the BPP's ten-point platform, itrefers to Black America as a "black colony" andto African Americans as "black colonialsubjects" who will determine "the will of blackpeople as to their national destiny." See HueyNewton, Revolutionary Suicide (New York:Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., 1973),122-123. BPP co-founders Huey Newton andBobby Seale also claimed "that the blackcommunity in America constituted an internalcolony that suffered from cultural destruction,white economic exploitation and racialoppression by an occupying white police force."See Michael L. Clemons and Charles E. Jones,"Global Solidarity: The Black Panther Party inthe International Arena," New Political Science21, no. 2 (1999), 189.

1 7 Singh, "The Black Panthers and the'Undeveloped Country' of the Left," 88.

18 For scholarly works that have briefly notedthe BPP's connection to North Korea in the late1960s and early 1970s, see Charles K.Armstrong, Tyranny of the Weak: North Koreaand the Modern World (Ithaca, NY: CornellUniversity Press, 2013), 177; Curtis Austin,"The Black Panthers and the Vietnam War," inAmerica and the Vietnam War: Re-Examining

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the Culture and History of a Generation, ed.Andrew Wiest, Mary Kathryn Barbier, andGlenn Robins (New York: Routledge, 2010);Floyd W. Hayes, III, and Francis A. Kiene, III,"'All Power to the People': The PoliticalThought of Huey P. Newton and the BlackPanther Party," in The Black Panther PartyReconsidered, 157-176; G. Louis Heath, Off ThePigs: The History and Literature of the BlackPanther Party, (Matuchen, New Jersey: TheScarecrow Press, 1976); Sean Malloy, "Uptightin Babylon: Eldridge Cleaver's Cold War,"Diplomatic History 37, no. 3 (2013): 538-571;Frank J. Rafalko, MH/CHAOS: The CIA'sCampaign Against the Radical New Left andthe Black Panthers(Annapolis, MD: NavalInstitute Press, 2011); and Jennifer B. Smith,An International History of the Black PantherParty (New York: Garland Publishing,Inc.,1999).

19 For important, recent scholarship on theglobal approach of the BPP, see YohuruWilliams, "'They've lynched our savior,Lumumba in the old fashion Southern style':The Conscious Internationalism of AmericanBlack Nationalism," in Black Beyond Borders,ed. Nico Slate (New York: Palgrave Macmillan,2012), 147-167; Yohuru Williams, "AmericanExported Black Nationalism: The StudentNonviolent Coordinating Committee, the BlackPanther Party, and the Worldwide FreedomStruggle, 1967-1972," Negro History Bulletin60, no. 3 (July-September 1997), 13-20; Joseph,Waiting 'Til the Midnight Hour; Singh, "TheBlack Panthers and the 'Undeveloped Country'of the Left," 57-108; Sean Malloy, "Uptight inBabylon: Eldridge Cleaver's Cold War,"Diplomatic History 37, no. 3 (2013): 538-571;Joshua Bloom and Waldo E. Martin, BlackAgainst Empire: The History and Politics of theBlack Panther Party (Berkeley, CA: Universityof California Press, 2013).

20 Malloy, "Uptight in Babylon," 552.

21 Yohuru Williams, "'They've lynched our

savior, Lumumba in the old fashion Southernstyle': The Conscious Internationalism ofAmerican Black Nationalism," in Black BeyondBorders, 165.

22 Oz Frankel, "The Black Panthers of Israel andthe Politics of the Radical Analogy," in BlackBeyond Borders, 81-106; Robbie Shilliam, "ThePolynesian Panthers and the Black PowerGang: Surviving Racism and Colonialism inAotearoa New Zealand," in Black BeyondBorders, 107-126; Nico Slate, "The DalitPanthers: Race, Caste, and Black Power inIndia," in Black Beyond Borders, 127- 143.

23 Joseph, Waiting 'Til the Midnight Hour, 176.

24 Joseph, Waiting 'Til the Midnight Hour, 211.

2 5 Williams, "American Exported BlackNationalism," Negro History Bulletin, 19.

26 The Black Panther was first published in April1967. Early on, "the newspaper's circulationwas still quite limited" but by 1970, "thepaper's circulation grew to an estimated139,000 copies per week." See Ward Churchill,"'To Disrupt, Discredit, and Destroy': The FBI'sSecret War against the Black Panther Party," inLiberation, Imagination, and the Black PantherParty: A New Look at the Panthers and TheirLegacy, ed. Kathleen Cleaver and GeorgeKatsiaficas (New York: Routledge, 2001),85-86.

27 An online digital archive of Eldridge Cleaver'spersonal papers regarding his travels to theDPRK and an e-dossier, written by the author ofthis piece, introducing these documents can befound at the Woodrow Wilson Center's NorthKorean International Documentation Project(NKIDP) website. See Benjamin R. Young, "'OurCommon Struggle against Our CommonEnemy': North Korea and the American RadicalL e f t , "(http://www.wilsoncenter.org/publication/north-korea-and-the-american-radical-left) WoodrowWilson International Center for Scholars-North

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Korea International Documentation Project(NKIDP) e-Dossier no. 14, February 11, 2013.

28 Bruce Cumings, "The American Century andthe Third World," Diplomatic History 23, no. 2(Spring 1999) , 357.

2 9 Charles K. Armstrong, "Social ism,Sovereignty, and the North Korean Exception,"i n N o r t h K o r e a : T o w a r d a B e t t e rUnderstanding, ed. Sonia Ryang (Plymouth,UK: Lexington Books, 2009), 45.

30 Bruce Cumings, North Korea: AnotherCountry (New York: The New Press, 2004), viii-ix, 134-135.

31 Joan Robinson, "Korean Miracle," MonthlyReview 16, no. 8 (January 1965), 541-549.

32 Victor Cha, An Impossible State: NorthKorea, Past and Future (New York: HarpersCollins Publishers, 2012), 24-25.

33 "1969 Statement from the U.S. People's Anti-Imperialist Delegation to Korea," University ofCalifornia, Berkeley, The Bancroft Library,BANC MSS 91/213c, The Eldridge CleaverPapers, 1963-1988, Carton 5, Folder 4.

34 Bruce Cumings, The Korean War: A History(New York: Random House, 2011), 159-160.

35 "Militant Solidarity with Peoples of Asia,Africa, and Latin America," The PyongyangTimes (January 6, 1969), 14.

36 Quote from Kim Il Sung cited in Pak In-kun,"U.S. Imperialism is the Outrageous Stranglerof National Independence and SovereignRights," Kulloja (December 1976), 60.

37 The training in these camps lasted from six toeighteen months, and during that time, theNorth Korean military taught foreignrevolutionaries Korean martial arts. The foreignrevolutionaries were also put through "vigoroustraining" such as running through the North

Korean mountains at night while carrying onehundred pound sandbags. "Running, running,running" became the training slogan of thesecamps. See "The Trade in Troublemaking,"Time 97, no. 19 (May 10, 1971), 38.

38 On March 31, 1970, nine members of theJapanese Red Army (JRA) hijacked a Japan AirLines plane and landed it in Pyongyang. Thesenine members eventually settled in a housingcomplex on the outskirts of Pyongyang and theNorth Korean government used the JRAconnection to send money and arms to variousThird World-oriented organizations, such as thePLO, the Baader-Meinhof group, and the ItalianRed Brigades. For information on the trainingof PLO and JRA members, see Bermudez,Terrorism: The North Korean Connection,102-104. For information on the training ofOfficial Irish Republican Army members in theDPRK in the 1980s, see John Sweeney, NorthKorea Undercover: Inside the World's MostSecret State (London: Transworld Publishers,2013), 201-226.

39 Rafalko, MH/CHAOS, 175-177.

40 Bruce Cumings, Korea's Place in the Sun: AModern History (New York: W.W. Norton &Co., 1997), 414.

41 Cumings, Korea's Place in the Sun, 414.

4 2 "DPRK Meet ing Welcomes Afr icanDelegations," Korean Central News Agency(KCNA) (September 14, 1978).

43 Liu Ming, "Changes and Continuities inPyongyang's China Policy," in North Korea inTransition: Politics, Economy, and Society, eds.Kyung-Ae Park and Scott Snyder (Plymouth,UK: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 2013),216.

44 "Document 14: Memo of the Soviet Embassyi n t h e D P R K , "(http://www.wilsoncenter.org/sites/default/files/NKIDP_Document_Reader__China_North_Korea

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_Relations.pdf) (August 5, 1967) in Limits of the'Teeth and Lips' Alliance: New Evidence onSino-DPRK Relations, 1955-1984, WoodrowWilson Center for International Scholars-NKIDP digital archive (accessed March 18,2013).

45 "Let Us Defend the Socialist Camp," RodongSinmun (October 28, 1963), 1-2.

46 Cha, An Impossible State, 112-113.

47 For more on this topic, see Balazs Szalontai,Kim Il Sung in the Khrushchev Era: Soviet-DPRK Relations and the Roots of North KoreanDespotism, 1953-1964 (Palo Alto: StanfordUniversity Press, 2004).

48 "Report, Embassy of Hungary in North Koreain North Korea to the Hungarian ForeignM i n i s t r y , "(http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/113413) NKIDP digital archive, December 8,1960. (accessed April 6, 2013).

49 "Report, Embassy of Hungary in North Koreain North Korea to the Hungarian ForeignM i n i s t r y(http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document / 1 1 3 4 1 3 ) , "(http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/113413) NKIDP Digital Archive.(accessedApril 6, 2013).

50 Szalontai, Kim Il Sung in the Khrushchev Era,131.

51 Kim Il Sung, "For the Development of theNon-Aligned Movement," Kim Il Sung SelectedWorks, vol. 40 (Pyongyang, DPRK: ForeignLanguages Publishing House, 1995), 117-144.

52 Bradley K. Martin, Under the Loving Care ofthe Fatherly Leader (New York: Thomas DunneBooks, 2004), 137.

53 [53] Charles K. Armstrong, "Juche and NorthKorea's Global Aspirations," North Korea

International Documentation Project WorkingPaper No. 1 (Washington, D.C.: WoodrowWilson Center Press, April 2009), 33.

5 4 Jon Lee Anderson, Che Guevara: ARevolutionary Life (New York: Grove Press,1997), 467.

55 Anderson, Che Guevara, 473.

56 I.F. Stone, "The Legacy of Che Guevara,"Ramparts (December 1967), 21.

57 "From a June 2, 1967 Memo of the SovietEmbassy in the DPRK (1 s t Secretary V.Nemchinov) About Some New Factors inK o r e a n - C u b a n R e l a t i o n s , "(http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/116706) (June 2, 1967) NKIDP digital archive(accessed March 9, 2015).

58 See Benjamin R. Young, "The Struggle forLegitimacy: North Korea's Relations withAfrica, 1965-1992," British Association forKorean Studies Papers no. 16 (forthcoming,2015).

59 Armstrong, Tyranny of the Weak, 144.

60 The Sub-Saharan African nations to which Irefer are Angola, Benin, Botswana, Cameroon,Ethiopia, Gabon, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea-Bissau, Lesotho, Madagascar, Mali, Mauritius,Niger, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, Togo,Uganda, Upper Volta, and Zaire. SeeArmstrong, Tyranny of the Weak , 179.

61 "Hungarian Embassy in the DPRK, Report:Visit of an Ethiopian Government Delegation int h e D P R K , "(http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/115818) (April 28, 1976) NKIDP digitalarchive (accessed May 10, 2013).

62 "Telegram 066.712 From the RomanianEmbassy in Pyongyang to the RomanianM i n i s t r y o f F o r e i g n A f f a i r s , "(http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/documen

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t/116500) (June 3, 1978), NKIDP digital archive(accessed March 9, 2015).

63 "Hungarian Embassy in the DPRK, Telegram,June 2 1976: Subject: Visit of the President ofM a l i i n t h e D P R K , "(http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/115819) (June 2, 1976), NKIDP digital archive(accessed March 9, 2015).

64 Cleaver would subsequently criticize Cuba'sadherence to the Soviet line of peacefulcoexistence and denounce Cuban racism.Malloy, "Uptight in Babylon," 558; Ray F.Herndon, "Ex-Black Panther Scores Racism inCuba," Chicago Defender (December 1, 1969),2.

65 Kathleen Cleaver, Unpublished Memoir, 540.

66 Malloy, "Uptight in Babylon," 559.

67 Malloy, "Uptight in Babylon," 559-560.

68 Kathleen Cleaver, "Back to Africa," in TheBlack Panther Party Reconsidered, 226.

69 In April 1970, the Panthers began selling abook composed of Kim Il Sung's revolutionarythoughts. The book was titled, Let Us EmbodyMore Thoroughly the Revolutionary Spirit ofIndependence, Self-Sustenance, and Self-Defense in All Fields of State Activity. In July1970, the Panthers began selling two otherbooks composed of Kim Il Sung's revolutionarythoughts. One of the books was titled, Each ofYou Should Be Prepared to be a Match for OneHundred. The other book was a September 7,1968 report from the anniversary celebration ofthe founding of the DPRK, t it led, TheDemocratic People's Republic of Korea is thebanner of freedom and independence for ourpeople and the powerful weapon of buildingsocialism and communism. The BPP sold thesethree books until January 1971. Each of thesebooks were published by The New WorldLiberation Front, a Marxist-Leninist-Maoistgroup based in the San Francisco Bay Area.

70 Eldridge Cleaver, "Manifesto from The Landof Blood & Fire," The Black Panther 4, no. 15(March 15, 1970).

71 Eldridge Cleaver, Soul on Fire (Waco, TX:Word Books Publisher, 1978), 147.

72 On the eve of the conference, "several NorthKorean organizations had sent a cablegram tothe Panthers' imprisoned chairman [BobbySeale], condemning the 'illegal' imprisonmentof Panther officers." See Committee on InternalSecurity, House of Representatives, Gun-BarrelPolitics: The Black Panther Party, 1966-1971(Washington, D.C.: Washington: U.S.Government Printing Office, 1971), 105.

73 Cleaver also gave a poignant speech wherehe insisted that revolutionaries inside America"need words [from journalists] that will makethe soldiers, sailors, marines, and specialforces of the U.S. imperialists turn their gunsagainst their commanding officers; words thatwill persuade them to evacuate South Korea,Vietnam, and all the bases of U.S. imperialistaggression around the world." G. Louis Heath,Off the Pigs: The History and Literature of theBlack Panther Party, (Matuchen, New Jersey:The Scarecrow Press, 1976), 163.

74 In 1971, Huey Newton traveled from Oaklandto China and engaged in his own solidaritycampaign with socialist Asian nations. Duringhis tour of China, he met with North Koreanofficials. The North Korean ambassador toChina gave Newton "a sumptuous dinner andshowed films of his country." On ChineseNational Day (October 1st), Newton attended alarge reception in the Great Hall of the Peopleand shared a table "with the head of PekingUniversity, the head of the North Korean armyand Comrade Chiang Ch'ing, Mao's wife." SeeNewton, Revolutionary Suicide, 325.

75 Eldridge Cleaver, "On the Ideology of theB l a c k P a n t h e r P a r t y , "(http://www.itsabouttimebpp.com/eldridge_cleaver/pdf/on_the_ideology_of_the_bpp.pdf) vol. 1

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A Black Panther Party Pamphlet (1969)(accessed August 15, 2013).

76 "Eldridge Cleaver's Typed Notes on Korea,"September 28 1969, Texas A&M University,Cushing Memorial Library and Archives, TheEldridge Cleaver Collection, 1959-1981.

77 Eldridge Cleaver foreword to JUCHE!: TheSpeeches and Writings of Kim Il Sung, Li Yuk-Sa ed. (New York: Grossman Publishers, 1972),XII.

78 Cumings, Korea's Place in the Sun, 414.

79 Myers, The Cleanest Race, 46.

80 Martin, Under the Loving Care of theFatherly Leader, 363.

81 Alzo David-West, "Between Confucianism andMarxism-Leninism: Juche and the Case ofChong Tasan," Korean Studies 35 (2011), 107.

82 Armstrong, Tyranny of the Weak, 53.

83 North Korea's Juche ideology was a modelthat the Panthers could appropriate into theParty's discourse as the organizationemphasized self -defense of the blackcommunity. In 1968, the Panthers changedtheir name from the BPP for Self-Defense to theBPP due to the organization's philosophicalshift from focusing primarily on gun violence toother forms of violence (unemployment, poorhousing, improper education, lack of publicfacilities, and the inequity of the draft) thataffected impoverished communities in theUnited States. Despite the name change, theorganization maintained an emphasis on theself-defense and self-reliance of the blackcommunity. See Bridgette Baldwin, "In theShadow of the Gun," in In Search of the BlackPanther Party: New Perspectives on aRevolutionary Movement, eds. Jama Lazerowand Yohuru Williams (Durham, N.C.: DukeUniversity Press, 2006), 83.

84 "We Must Rely on Ourselves," The BlackPanther 4, no. 13 (February 28, 1970).

85 Committee on Internal Security, Gun-BarrelPolitics, 105.

86 For more on key black leaders within theCPUSA, see Cedric Robinson, Black Marxism:The Making of the Black Radical Tradition(Chapel Hill: University of North CarolinaPress, 2000) and Robin D.G. Kelley, Hammerand Hoe: Alabama Communists during theGreat Depression (Chapel Hill: University ofNorth Carolina Press, 1990).

87 "Interview with Eldridge Cleaver," The BlackPanther 4, no. 18 (April 4, 1970).

88 In a 1970 interview with a journalist from theUnited Arab Republic, Kim Il Sung expressedsolidarity with the African American strugglefor equal rights and said, "Imperialism isattacked not only from outside but also fromwithin and is confronted with an acute crisis.The struggle of the Negroes against racialdiscrimination and for freedom and democraticrights and an anti-war movement of the massesof the peoples are going on extensively in theUnited States." As his remarks reveal, Kim IlSung regarded African Americans and the anti-war movement in the United States as allies inthe global fight against American imperialism.See Kim Il Sung, Answers to the QuestionsRaised by Foreign Journalists (Pyongyang:Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1970)196.

89 The "charge," to which the North Koreanpress referred, was the May 21, 1969 murderof Alex Rackley, a member of the BPP's NewYork Chapter, who had been suspected of beinga police informant. After months of trials anddeliberation, the jury was unable to reach averdict on Seale's involvement in Rackley'smurder and he was released from prison in1972. For the North Korean article, see"Suppression of USA Black Panther Party MustBe Stopped at Once," The Pyongyang Times

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(January 26, 1970). For more on the Seale trial,see Paul Bass, "Black Panther Torture 'Trial'T a p e S u r f a c e s , "(http://www.newhavenindependent.org/index.php/archives/entry/rackley_trial_tape_surfaces/)New Haven Independent (February 21, 2013)(accessed September 4, 2013); and NeilMacFarquhar, "Harold M. Mulvey, 86, Judge atTense Black Panther Trials," New York Times(March 1, 2000), C30

90 "Savage Repression against the BlackPanther Party of USA Must Be StoppedImmediately," The Pyongyang Times (July 6,1970), 8.

91 Committee on Internal Security, Gun-BarrelPolitics, 105.

92 Committee on Internal Security, Gun-BarrelPolitics, 105.

9 3 Judy Tzu-Chun Wu has thoroughlydocumented the travels and experiences of theAnti-Imperialist delegation throughout socialistAsia in her recent book. See Judy Tzu-Chun Wu,Radicals on the Road: Internationalism,Feminism, and Orientalism during the VietnamEra (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press,2013).

94 Kathleen Cleaver, Unpublished Memoir,570-572.

95 Malloy, "Uptight in Babylon," 559.

96 As explained in Brown's memoir, Cleaver wasdisgruntled with the BPP's "bullshit breakfastsfor children" program in Oakland while shefavored it. Consequently, Cleaver had toldmembers of the delegation to avoid Brown.Brown, A Taste of Power, 218-231.

97 Kathleen Cleaver, "Back to Africa," in TheBlack Panther Party Reconsidered, 232.

98 Cleaver had organized "the U.S. People'sAnti-Imperialist Delegation" with the help of

white radical and BPP supporter, RobertScheer, the editor of Ramparts. After his visitto North Korea, according to Ronald Radosh,Scheer "talked and talked about the paradisehe had seen during a recent visit to NorthKorea, about the greatness of Kim Il Sung,about the correct nature of his so-called Jucheideology." See Ronald Radosh, Commies: AJourney Through the Old Left, the New Left,and the Leftover Left (San Francisco:Encounter Books, 2002), 108-109.

99 Herman Badillo and Milton Haynes, A Bill ofNo Rights: Attica and the American PrisonSystem (New York: Outerbridge and Lazard,1972), 87.

100 Cleaver, Soul on Fire, 122.

101 Kathleen Cleaver, "Back to Africa," 232.

102 Byron Booth, "Beyond the DemarcationLine," The Black Panther 3, no. 27 (October 25,1969).

103 Newton, Revolutionary Suicide, 123.

104 Martin, Under the Loving Care of theFatherly Leader, 58.

105 Interview of Elaine Brown, The BlackPanther 5, no. 14 (October 3, 1970).

106 "Eldridge Cleaver Notebooks," 1970,University of California, Berkeley, The BancroftLibrary, BANC MSS 91/213c, The EldridgeCleaver Papers, 1963-1988, Carton 5, Folder 8.

107 Alondra Nelson, Body and Soul: The BlackPanther Party and the Fight against MedicalDiscrimination (Minneapolis, MN: University ofMinnesota Press, 2011), 106.

108 Nelson, Body and Soul, 4.

109 Interview of Elaine Brown, The BlackPanther 5, no. 14 (October 3, 1970).

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110 "Eldridge Cleaver Notebooks," 1970,University of California, Berkeley, The BancroftLibrary, BANC MSS 91/213c, The EldridgeCleaver Papers, 1963-1988, Carton 5, Folder 8.

111 Kathleen Cleaver, "A Message to the BlackG.I.'s in South Korea," The Black Panther 5, no.24 (December 14, 1970)

112 Andrei Lankov, The Real North Korea: Lifeand Politics in the Failed Stalinist Utopia(Oxford University Press, 2013), 64-66.

113 Interview of Elaine Brown, The BlackPanther 5, no. 14 (October 3, 1970).

114 Brown, A Taste of Power, 226.

115 "1969 Statement from the U.S. People's Anti-Imperialist Delegation to Korea," University ofCalifornia, Berkeley, The Bancroft Library,BANC MSS 91/213c, The Eldridge CleaverPapers, 1963-1988, Carton 5, Folder 4.

116 Newton, Revolutionary Suicide, 122-123.

117 Rafalko, MH/Chaos, 119.

118 Kathleen Cleaver, "Back to Africa," 238.

119 Malloy, "Uptight in Babylon," 564.

120 Malloy, "Uptight in Babylon," 563-564.

121 David Hilliard and Lewis Cole, This Side ofGlory: The Autobiography of David Hilliard andthe Story of the Black Panther Party (Chicago:Lawrence Hill Books, 1993), 224.

1 2 2 "FBI Brands Black Panthers 'MostDangerous' of Extremists,'" New York Times

(July 14, 1970), 21.

123 As Ward Churchill asserts, COINTELPROwas so successful in disrupting the activities ofthe Panthers that by the end of 1971, "the BPPin the sense that it was originally conceived [in1965] was effectively destroyed." See Churchill,"'To Disrupt, Discredit, and Destroy',"Liberation, Imagination, and the Black PantherParty, 78.

124 Malloy, "Uptight in Babylon," 565.

125 Bloom and Martin, Black Against Empire,390-393.

126 Malloy, "Uptight in Babylon," 567.

127 "Note on a Conversation with the FirstSecretary of the USSR Embassy, ComradeKurbatov, on 10 March 1972 in the GDRE m b a s s y , "(http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/110820) Political Archive of the GermanMinistry of Foreign Affairs. Obtained byNKIDP. (accessed October 1, 2013).

128 "Memorandum on the Conversation betweenT o d o r Z h i v k o v a n d K i m I l S u n g , "(http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/114533) Personal collection of formerBulgarian diplomat Georgi Mitov. Obtained bythe Bulgarian Cold War Research Group.(accessed October 1, 2013).

129 Malloy, "Uptight in Babylon," 567-569.

130 Somini Sengupta, "Memories Of A ProperGirl Who Was A Panther," New York Times(June 17, 2000), C10.