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A Choice Outstanding Academic Title of the YearHow the fight for civil rights in America became an important front in the Cold WarIn 1958, an African American handyman named Jimmy Wilson was sentenced to die in Alabama for stealing less than two dollars. Shocking as this sentence was, it was overturned only after intense international attention and the interference of Secretary of State John Foster Dulles. Soon after World War II, American racism became a major concern of US allies, a chief Soviet propaganda theme, and an obstacle to American Cold War goals throughout Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Racial segregation undermined the American image, harming foreign relations in every administration from Truman to Johnson. Mary Dudziak shows how the Cold War helped to facilitate desegregation and other key social reforms at home as the United States sought to polish its image abroad, yet how a focus on appearances over substance limited the nature and extent of progress. Cold War Civil Rights situates the Cold War in civil rights history while giving an international perspective to the fight for racial justice in America.
About the author
Mary L. Dudziak is the Asa Griggs Candler Professor of Law at Emory University. Her books include
War Time: An Idea, Its History, Its Consequences and
Exporting American Dreams: Thurgood Marshall’s African Journey.
Summary
A Choice Outstanding Academic Title of the Year
How the fight for civil rights in America became an important front in the Cold War
In 1958, an African American handyman named Jimmy Wilson was sentenced to die in Alabama for stealing less than two dollars. Shocking as this sentence was, it was overturned only after intense international attention and the interference of Secretary of State John Foster Dulles. Soon after World War II, American racism became a major concern of US allies, a chief Soviet propaganda theme, and an obstacle to American Cold War goals throughout Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Racial segregation undermined the American image, harming foreign relations in every administration from Truman to Johnson. Mary Dudziak shows how the Cold War helped to facilitate desegregation and other key social reforms at home as the United States sought to polish its image abroad, yet how a focus on appearances over substance limited the nature and extent of progress. Cold War Civil Rights situates the Cold War in civil rights history while giving an international perspective to the fight for racial justice in America.
Additional text
"Dudziak's argument is clearly written, prodigiously researched, and profoundly important. . . . Cold War Civil Rights . . . is the most comprehensively researched study of the connection between foreign and domestic racial politics in the post-World War II era. Dudziak's book will inspire a reconsideration of postwar civil rights history."---Alex Lubin, American Quarterly
