Cold War Civil Rights (eBook)

Race and the Image of American Democracy

Mary L. Dudziak (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2011
352 Seiten
Princeton University Press (Verlag)
978-1-4008-3988-9 (ISBN)

Infos

In 1958, an African-American handyman named Jimmy Wilson was sentenced to die in Alabama for stealing two dollars. Shocking as this sentence was, it was overturned only after intense international attention and the interference of an embarrassed John Foster Dulles. Soon after the United States' segregated military defeated a racist regime in World War II, American racism was a major concern of U.S. allies, a chief Soviet propaganda theme, and an obstacle to American Cold War goals throughout Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Each lynching harmed foreign relations, and "e;the Negro problem"e; became a central issue in every administration from Truman to Johnson. In what may be the best analysis of how international relations affected any domestic issue, Mary Dudziak interprets postwar civil rights as a Cold War feature. She argues that the Cold War helped facilitate key social reforms, including desegregation. Civil rights activists gained tremendous advantage as the government sought to polish its international image. But improving the nation's reputation did not always require real change. This focus on image rather than substance--combined with constraints on McCarthy-era political activism and the triumph of law-and-order rhetoric--limited the nature and extent of progress. Archival information, much of it newly available, supports Dudziak's argument that civil rights was Cold War policy. But the story is also one of people: an African-American veteran of World War II lynched in Georgia; an attorney general flooded by civil rights petitions from abroad; the teenagers who desegregated Little Rock's Central High; African diplomats denied restaurant service; black artists living in Europe and supporting the civil rights movement from overseas; conservative politicians viewing desegregation as a communist plot; and civil rights leaders who saw their struggle eclipsed by Vietnam. Never before has any scholar so directly connected civil rights and the Cold War. Contributing mightily to our understanding of both, Dudziak advances--in clear and lively prose--a new wave of scholarship that corrects isolationist tendencies in American history by applying an international perspective to domestic affairs. In her new preface, Dudziak discusses the way the Cold War figures into civil rights history, and details this book's origins, as one question about civil rights could not be answered without broadening her research from domestic to international influences on American history.

Autor

Mary L. Dudziak is professor of law, history, and political science at the University of Southern California. Her books include Exporting American Dreams: Thurgood Marshall's African Journey, September 11 in History, and Legal Borderlands.

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 11.7.2011
• Reihe/Serie: Politics and Society in Modern America
• Reihe/Serie: Politics and Society in Modern America
• Zusatzinfo: 16 halftones. 1 map.
• Verlagsort: Princeton
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Sachbuch/Ratgeber ► Geschichte / Politik ► 20. Jahrhundert bis 1945
• Themenwelt: Geschichte ► Allgemeine Geschichte ► Neuzeit (bis 1918)
• Themenwelt: Geschichte ► Allgemeine Geschichte ► Zeitgeschichte
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Geschichte ► Regional- / Ländergeschichte
• Themenwelt: Sozialwissenschaften ► Politik / Verwaltung ► Europäische / Internationale Politik
• Schlagworte: activism • African-American Civil Rights Movement (1954–68) • African Americans • American dream • American imperialism • americans • Anti-Americanism • Anti-Communism • A. Philip Randolph • archivist • assassination • Brown v. Board of Education • Bull Connor • Chester Bowles • Citizenship of the United States • Civil Rights Act • Civil Rights Act of 1964 • Civil Rights Congress • Colonialism • communism • Communist propaganda • Criticism • David Garrow • Dean Acheson • Dean Rusk • Democracy • democratic ideals • desegregation • Desegregation busing • diplomatic history • Dwight D. Eisenhower • Earl Warren • Emancipation Proclamation • Exclusion • Executive Order • Federal government of the United States • foreign policy • Foreign policy of the United States • Foreign Relations • Gerald Horne • Government • Grassroots • Harry S. Truman • Headline • hypocrisy • Ideology • International Relations • John F. Kennedy • Latin America • Legislation • librarian • Literature • Little Rock Nine • lynching • Lyndon B. Johnson • March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom • Martin Luther King, Jr. • Massive Resistance • McCarthyism • National Association for the Advancement of Colored People • national security • newspaper • Orval Faubus • Pamphlet • Paul Robeson • person of color • Political Party • Politician • Politics • politics of the united states • Prejudice • President's Committee on Civil Rights • Propaganda in the Soviet Union • Protest • Racial Equality • Racial segregation • Racism • racism in the united states • Roy Wilkins • Slavery • Society of the United States • Soviet Union • Statute • supreme court of the united states • Totalitarianism • un-american • United States • United States constitution • United States Department of State • unrest • USIS (company) • Voice of America • Voting • Voting Rights Act of 1965 • W. E. B. Du Bois • What Happened • World Communism • World War II • Writing • Yale University
• ISBN-10: 1-4008-3988-2 / 1400839882
• ISBN-13: 978-1-4008-3988-9 / 9781400839889