HIST 604

FINAL EXAM--Spring 2005

Part II:

Kerner Commission:  Named after the commission chairman, Otto Kerner, The Kerner Commission was appointed by President Lyndon Johnson in 1967 to identify the what, why, and steps required identifying racially motivated disparities in American society following the riots in California, Illinois and New York during the 1960s.  Established by the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorder, the commission revealed that America was living in “two separate societies – one Black, one White separate and unequal”[1].  The resulting report of findings revealed in 1968 identified several disparities plaguing African Americans including racial discriminatory practices in housing, education, employment and health care.  The Commission further identified the influx of poor Blacks into the central city and the exodus of the middle-class whites to the suburbs as exacerbating the problem[2].  Bowing to internal and political pressure, the Commission report was shelved and many of the Commission’s recommendations went unimplemented.

 

Black Panthers (1966-1972):  The Black Panthers were created in 1966 amid the unrest of northern citywide riots in California, Illinois, and New York.  The Watts riot in 1966 provided the breeding ground for Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale “to combat police brutality in the ghetto” (Sitkoff 1993, p.204) with the creation of the Black Panther for Self-Defense organization.  The Black Panthers wore black clothing and hats and visibly carried weapons.  Their militant ideas against oppression and white supremacy caused them to acquire a reputation of aggression, an image they would fight through the media who accused them of being black racists.  The Black Panthers direct, militant actions brought a large number of black students into their organization as the non-violent methods of Martin Luther King, Jr. waned.  The Black Panthers used their image to shape the education of African Americans in inner cities.  They used the Breakfast Program, which supplied meals to children, as a means of providing youth with their messages of equality and revolution against white oppression.  In 1968, The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) officially supported and merged their ideology with the Black Panthers – reinforcing direct action against oppression and self-defense as a means of reacting to the violence of whites against blacks. In 1967, Huey Newton led a march toward the California legislature against a recent bill to ban the availability of hand guns aimed at controlling the Black Panthers. Support for Newton and the Black Panthers increased after Newton’s arrest for killing a police officer. His conviction was overturned in 1970.  During the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, the Black Panthers caused a disruption, which reinforced the image of the Black Panthers as being too direct for blacks and disruptive, anarchists from white leaders.  From 1968 – 1972, the Black Panthers were a target for COINTELPRO, an organization established under J. Edgar Hoover, aimed at identifying – or even creating – intelligence data on subversives and agitators.  Using informants, the FBI gathered data and secured surveillance of Black Panther movements.  During a raid, Black Panther leader Fred Hampton was killed. While Police Chief Hanrahan identified the Black Panthers as the instigators of violence, which resulted in Hampton’s death, journalists identified inconsistencies in the story and identified the police as the sole aggressor in the raid.  During the same year, Hoover identified the Black Panthers as the greatest internal threat to the United States.  During the 1969 trial of Bobby Seale, the nation was outraged at the vision of Seale being bound and gagged before Judge Julius.   In the 1970s, external and internal conflicts reduced the Black Panthers to more of an ideal than a reality.

Memphis Garbage Workers Strike:  In 1967, amid the civil unrest in major cities throughout the United States, Memphis garbage workers went on strike to identify poor working conditions, union misrepresentation, and inadequate health care and employment practices.  The strike “led into violent turmoil – as a black youth gang went on a burning and looting rampage and the police responded with tear gas and bullets” (Sitkoff 1993, p.207). Shouting ‘Black Power’, the police met the group with aggression as beatings and arrests intensified.  The Mayor of Memphis, Henry Loeb, refused to view the strike as racially motivated, but James Lawson, a Memphis pastor requested Martin Luther King Jr.’s assistance in support.  King left his Poor Peoples Campaign to aid his friend.  While in Memphis, King was assassinated – causing riots to breakout across the country.  The strike lasted 65 days after the administration provided “union recognition, dues deduction, wage increases, a four-step grievance procedure ending in arbitration, and end to racial discrimination in promotions and job assignments” (American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees: Retrieved from the World Wide Web on May 2, 2005: http://afscme.org/about/memphis2.htm ).

 
"Resurrection City”: In 1967, Martin Luther King Jr., in response to growing economic plights among African Americans and the surge of riots against poor housing, inadequate health care, and declining employment prospects, launched a Poor Peoples Campaign “to force the nation to confront the inadequate food and health care, poor schooling, and decrepit housing” (Sitkoff 1993, p.207). Focusing on political power as a means of gaining economic power, demonstrators marched on Washington, D.C. to force national attention and focus the plight of African Americans at the steps of the center of American power.  Upon arriving in Washington, the marchers used materials to create a shantytown, which was named Resurrection City.  For weeks, the inhabitants of this makeshift city created a community while raising awareness.  However, while working on ending racial inequalities within the garbage workers union in Memphis, Martin Luther King was assassinated.  The Poor Peoples Campaign stymied against attention of his death.  Campaigners and supporters of Martin Luther King attempted to keep the movement alive – but during the summer, rains flooded parts of Resurrection City and eventually, the movement failed to attract attention and dissolved.  The Eyes on the Prize videos presented a sad reminder of the city as bulldozers removed the final remnants of the City (PBS Home Video, “Eyes on the Prize” 1992, “The Promised Land: 1967 - 1968”).

*Robert Kennedy/Martin Luther King:  Robert Kennedy was the Attorney General and head of the Justice Department during his brother John Kennedy’s Presidency.  Robert Kennedy believed “their tactic was to use the law courts as a way of enforcing already passed civil rights legislation.  No southern court could really argue against laws that were already in print”[3].  Robert Kennedy entered the Civil Rights picture during the Freedom Rides in 1961.  After violence broke out, Robert Kennedy used Presidential approval and “announced that the Justice Department would seek to enjoin the KKK and National States Rights Party from interfering with peaceful interstate travel” (Sitkoff, 1993, p.97) and worked with Federal and State leaders to move the work forward.  The Kennedy Administration urged peaceful and civil obedience and weighed the needs of the Civil Rights Movement against political backlash – especially in the South.  Robert Kennedy then followed the administration, acting as a mediator between Martin Luther King and other Civil Rights leaders and organizations to calm the growing racial tensions throughout the South.  Later, while seeking a bid as President, Robert Kennedy toured the Deep South to view economic hardship as the Poor Peoples Campaign gathered steam for a march on Washington. D.C.  However, in 1968 during his political campaign, he was assassinated in California. 

 

Martin Luther King was the leader of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and was a key leader in the Civil Rights Movement.  During the Freedom Rides, King led protests against discriminatory practices on interstate travel.  While Kennedy positioned himself as a mediator, King continued his progress as a motivator, concentrating on immediate actions rather than the gradual response requested by Kennedy and the President’s Administration.  While working with the Poor Peoples Campaign, King supported Robert Kennedy’s initiative to view the state of economic affairs in the Deep South but continued to view Kennedy as a moderate.  While working with the Poor Peoples Campaign organizers and followers, King submitted to assist with the garbage strike in Memphis where, he was assassinated.

*Robin Gregory/Howard University:  Robin Gregory was a student of Howard University who ran for homecoming queen in 1967.  Gregory supported the image of ‘Black is Beautiful’ and appeared to the homecoming committee wearing traditional African garments and an ‘afro’ hairstyle.  In contrast, the other women running for homecoming queen were dressed in what was considered ‘conformist’ attire – attempting to look ‘white’ with relaxed hair and contemporary clothing.  Gregory’s stance won her the title. 

 

By the 1960s, Howard University was a premier institution and considered the ‘black Harvard’ in curriculum and reputation.  In 1967, African American students led a protest and sit-in at the University aimed at securing black cultural identification, enhanced African-American curriculum, and a change in the University’s administration to include more African American representation.  Like Robin Gregory, the students sought a change in their identification towards self-awareness, complimenting the actions of African American organizations such as the Black Panthers who sought self-identity and self-defense.  However, the University wanted to promote conformity and integration.  The administration fought for their students to work within white America instead of removing themselves from this general identity.  After receiving demands from Adriene Manns, who lead the negotiation for student’s rights, the University agreed to improved representation and curriculum aimed at advancing African American culture.

 

COINTELPRO: A secret organization within the jurisdiction of the FBI and its leader, J. Edgar Hoover.  Established in the 1950s, Hoover launched the organization, which sidestepped legal methods of obtaining information and conducting surveillance on key figures throughout the 1960s.  The agency was exposed when documents were confiscated and papers were spread which identified actions against Martin Luther King, the Black Panthers, and other members of the Civil Rights Movement.  The aim of COINTELPRO was to secure evidence – at any means possible – to support Hoover’s belief that members of the Civil Rights Movement were anti-American, agitators, or Communists.  COINTELPRO operatives infiltrated Civil Rights organizations and captured both personal and professional information on its leaders aimed at discrediting them in America and around the world.

 
 *Miami (Overtown) & Watts:  In Miami, urban growth positioned the city council to extend the boundaries of the city and the development of major highway arteries surrounding the city.  In the path of this development was Overtown.  Overtown had been a long-standing African American city.  Prior to this announcement, the city residents lived in a communal faction away from the institutions associated with Miami.  Luther Brooks, who owned the largest portion of Overtown’s rental units agreed to the development and the city was torn apart.  The residents were uprooted by eminent domain and forced to relocate into neighboring towns and cities.  The mass exodus enraged white citizens in neighboring communities as African Americans moved into their neighborhood.  The change caused a white-flight from the areas.  City services dwindled and economic depression affected the area.  The racially divided area drew national attention when Arthur McDuffie was brutally beaten and killed by police officers during a random traffic stop.  While police officials supported the claim that McDuffie was treated outside of the law, a jury found the defendants in the case not guilty.  The 1980 verdict caused a massive riot in the city.

 

On August 11, 1965 the tension throughout the African American communities of California were heightened by disfranchisement, economic disparity, and unresolved demands from Federal and State authorities.  While handling a disruption at a local establishment, police were met with local citizens as they attempted to arrest a local youth.  African American solidarity was reaching a high point during this time as Civil Rights leaders like Malcolm X and the Black Panthers started to generate self-defense and direct action against oppression.  The citizens began to attack the police and their reinforcements.  The initial action lasted throughout the night.  However, the next day an all-out riot started, causing the authorities to seek protection from the Nation Guard.  Businesses, homes and industries were set on fire as looting took place throughout the city. Within days, “an estimated fifty thousand African-Americans” (Sitkoff 1994, p.186) were in the streets in protest.  The images portray a war zone throughout the area, which took six days to calm.

 

While the residents of Overtown considered themselves tricked into abandoning their homes and community, the violence in Miami was in result of heightened tensions after the trial of McDuffie’s assailants.  However, they did not have the self-defense attitude of the citizens of Watts.  Citizens of Watts immediately showed solidarity against the white police and immediately started to take direct action against the police.

 

Part III. Short Answer (5 to 7 sentences)  ANSWER EACH OF THE FOLLOWING---(5 points each--20 points each)

1.      Which one of the "Eyes on the Prize" videos from the second half of the course was the most significant and important to  you?  Which one of the lecture videos from the second half of the course was the most significant and important to you? 

Explain your answer. Please be specific—your answers will help guide a future revision of course materials.

 

I believe the most useful episode of Eyes on the Prize was Episode 8 – “Two Societies 1965 – 1968”, which provided a status of the civil rights movement after the initial rulings in Brown vs. the Board of Education, Little Rock, and the legislative rulings throughout the 1950s.  In this episode, I saw the changing dynamics within the various Civil Rights organizations – the decay of the nonviolent actions of Martin Luther King, the rise of direct, aggressive action by the Black Panthers, and the devastation that took place in Watts, Chicago, and Detroit as African American society moved into the streets and out-of-the courts to file their protests. 

I believe that lecture five provided me with the most interesting information associated with the Civil Rights Movement.  Like lecture one, this lecture provided supporting evidence in the area of Civil Rights – reflecting on the Office of the President in Civil Rights affairs.  Unlike the books, online materials, and episode videos, this lecture provided a summary of the activities going on outside of the images and interpretations to provide a comprehensive view for interpreting the Civil Rights Movement as a whole.

 2. Based on your reading of various sources available on-line for this course, how significant were America's racial dilemmas in terms of the nation's image and dealings with other countries?  NOTE: Students taking the course for undergraduate credit need only comment on the statement by Secretary of State Dean Rusk.  Students taking the course for graduate credit must comment using both the Rusk statement and ONE other source.

After World War II, the world viewed United States as the leader of the free world.  As such, world opinion held the United States to the highest of standards in defending the Constitution, which calls for equal justice for all under the law.  With growing Cold War concerns with the Soviet Union and the liberation of African countries from colonialism, government officials understood the role that race relations had in supporting and promoting the United States within the global arena.  Shortly after the war, developing nations of Africa and Asia were courted by the United States for strategic value – both militarily and to support, philosophically, the role of democracy throughout the world.  However, “the United States was viewed by some Third World countries in Asia and Africa as a nation with questionable values because of discrimination against its own nonwhite citizens” (Logan 1985, p.72). In 1961, Secretary Dean Rusk wrote a letter to Attorney General, Robert Kennedy regarding international affairs.  In his memo he stated, “over half of the nearly 100 diplomatic missions now accredited to this Government, as well as probably the majority of those accredited to the United Nations, are from countries which are predominately of the races of Asia and Africa, and represent the largest part of the world’s population” (Rusk 1961).  The growing violence and demonstrations exhibited within the United States drew international condemnation against racial intolerance.  Newspapers throughout the world wrote of the African American plight for justice (Dudziak, 2004). 

 3. “If Eyes on the Prize has any weakness it is that it portrays the civil rights movement as primarily, if not indeed exclusively, urban phenomenon.”  Agree or disagree with this statement. NOTE: Students taking the course for undergraduate credit need only comment on this statement using the video series and Sitkoff.  Students taking the course for graduate credit must comment using any and all sources available.

I believe that the Eyes on the Prize videos portrayed high-profile images of the Civil Rights movement as predominately an urban-centered movement.  After reading Greene’s Praying for Sheetrock, and Fleming’s In the Shadow of Selma as well as various online resources like Nan Woodruff and the plight of southern landowners and sharecroppers as well as supplemental articles, we can see that the civil rights movement was a national concern involving African Americans in both urban and rural societies in their struggle for equality.  The rural depictions of civil rights often mirrored those portrayed within large cities throughout the country; however, the issues and solutions developed in rural areas were often unique to those conducted in the large cities. Comparisons between urban and rural actions included the use of the Church as the center of civil rights discussions.  Like images of Martin Luther King throughout Alabama, in McIntosh County, Georgia, local organizers like Thurnell Alston stood before a packed church to motivate the African American citizens toward action (Greene 1991).  Further, like the in-depth views of civil rights organizations like the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and the Congress on Racial Equality, many of the Civil Rights organizations worked within the Deep South to affect change.  In Wilcox County, Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee coordinators “were encouraging the county’s young people to challenge authority” (Fleming 2004, p.192).  Additionally, the Eyes on the Prize videos presented the challenges and reactions of Presidents from Roosevelt to Reagan to the growing racial crisis. 

While images presented by Eyes on the Prize presented the national crisis associated with the Civil Rights Movement, it was the reading materials and online resources, which provided a unique interpretation of the impact of the movement in rural areas.

4. How would you categorize the Black Panthers today?  What constitutes the "new black power?"

Today’s Black Panthers appear to be at odds with the past.  In his New York Times article “Graying Black Panthers Fight Would-Be Heirs”, Dean Murphy tracked the progress of the Black Panthers since the fizzled on the national scene in the 1970s.  The Black Panthers of the 1960s and 1970s held beliefs in self-awareness and self-defense but also contributed to community programs to build the mind and spirit of African American inner-city youth.  White society and the media painted Black Panthers as anti-white and racist, militant and dangerous.  Today’s Panthers are still considered dangerous.  In his article, Murphy identified “The Southern Poverty Law Center lists the organization as an active hate group along with the Ku Klux Klan and various neo-Nazi movements. A report on the New Black Panther Party by the center includes statements by its leaders using phrases like "white devils" and "bloodsucking Jews." Several years ago, the Anti-Defamation League also identified the party as a hate group; a spokeswoman described its members as armed and dangerous” (Murphy 2002).  However, the old and the new are clashing over identity and progression.  When interviewed, Bobby Seale, one of the cofounders of the Black Panther organization in 1967, identified his organization with progression and community rather than militants and racism.  Bobby Seale and his followers attracted African American youth to his cause in the 1960s and 1970s as a direct method against the gradualism that many believed followed Martin Luther King and his non-violent method.  Today’s Black Panthers are taking on the new generation of African-American issues and reject their founding fathers, like Seale, whom they now believe to have been too passive and the “The standoff has each sides making accusations and insinuations about the other. Mr. Shabazz (leader of the current Black Panther movement) said Mr. Seale and the other party elders had only themselves to blame, suggesting they had turned their backs on their militant traditions”(Murphy 2002). 

While Seale and Shabazz fight over the use of the Black Panther image as well as their direction, the Black Panthers are embracing the ‘new black power’ image identified by Colbert King in a 2002 Washington Post article that calls for direct and aggressive power within the political scene to obtain and hold onto political power.  After fighting for representation during the 1964 Democratic National Convention, African Americans understood that to obtain change in America, they must gain and hold onto political and economic power[4].  King identified the struggle, not for acceptance, but for recognition of the African American power, politically.  The ‘Black Power’ movement of the 1960s and 1970s brought first-time elections of African Americans in major cities throughout the country.  However, the push for power has not dwindled and like King, there is a call for a new power – political power.  King’s commentary suggested, “It’s time for African American Democratic leaders to muster the courage to go toe-to-toe with their party. If the elders, comfortable and satisfied with crumbs and pats on the head, lack the stomach for a fight, they should step aside and let the next generation take over. And if the elders won't move, then black Democratic voters should join their restive peers across the country and start looking for another home” (King 2002).

 

Part IV. Essay--For UNDERGRADUATE STUDENT] enrolled in History 604ca: CHOOSE ONE of the following questions and respond in a well-written essay in which you incorporate materials from variety of sources (both videos and texts, i.e. Sitkoff & and other readings-see especially the WASHINGTON POST article in the Midterm Folder). [20 points]

GRADUATE STUDENTS] enrolled in History 604ca: CHOOSE ONE of the following questions and respond in a well-written essay in which you incorporate materials from variety of sources (both videos and texts, i.e. Sitkoff and other readings). [25 points]  Also GRADUATE STUDENTS MUST COMPLETE THE MANDATORY ESSAY #3 [25 points]---Graduate Students have a total of FIFTY POINTS in ESSAY RESPONSE.

2.      "Although political organization and politics formed the essential elements of the civil rights movement in America, social realities and economic circumstances ultimately dictated the movement's objectives and determined the movement's success." Agree or Disagree with this statement using specific evidence from this course.

The civil rights movement prior to 1960 took aim at the inequities of the American political system by addressing the plight of African Americans in the court systems, filing lawsuits against discrimination and targeting white supremacy at the local, state and national level.  Member organizations like the NAACP used their presence to sponsored legislative changes aimed at securing basic Constitutional rights for African America citizens including voting privileges, and the pursuit of happiness through proper housing and educational opportunities.  Legislative changes in the 1950s included the ruling of Brown vs. the Board of Education, which provided access to education and “in 1957, Congress enacted civil-rights legislation for the first time since Reconstruction…which formally declared illegal the disenfranchisement of African-Americans” (Sitkoff, 1993, p.31). 

By the 1960s, the movement split activities between pressuring national leaders for political changes while other organizations moved towards exercising their access to their Constitutional rights, politically and economically.   Throughout the 1960s, boycotts and demonstrations erupted throughout the country in support of African American’s obtaining their Constitutional rights.  Martin Luther King pushed civil disobedience and his nonviolent methods of protest while using the media and intense pressure to show the world the images of segregation and intolerance within the United States.

In 1963, Malcolm X broke with the Nation of Islam to pursue a political platform while the Nation of Islam insisted on remain a socially based organization within the civil rights movement[5].  During this period, the movement’s direction changed from calling for freedom to calling for power[6].  While advocating the civil rights as a political movement, Malcolm X understood the role of social problems within the civil rights movement.  In his address to the media over leaving the Nation of Islam, Malcolm announced, “I am going to organize and head a new mosque in New York City known as the Muslim Mosque, Inc.  This will give us a religious base, and the spiritual force necessary to rid our people of the vices that destroy the moral fiber of our community” (Haley and Malcolm X 1964, p.323).  After returning from his pilgrimage to Mecca, “Malcolm urged traditional civil rights forces to lift domestic struggle to a higher plane by adding to it the goal of securing African American’s universal human rights” (Howard-Pitney, 2004, p.156).

During the early 1960s, Martin Luther King identified a need for understanding how socio-economic changes affected the plight of African Americans.  He stated, “Many white Americans of good will have never connected bigotry with economic exploitation.  They have deplored injustice, but tolerated or ignored economic injustice” (King, 1963, p.10).  In a statement by Andrew Manis, leader of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, he indicated, “regardless of race, families of lower economic status experience more frustrations and have fewer resources for coping with them.  As a result, such families resort to violence more often than those in higher status groups” (Fleming 2004, p.148).  The evidence was mounting that America was on the brink of a revolution – not only political power, but over social and economic conditions as well.  These pressures intensified throughout urban and rural areas, projected civil rights into an effort to combat domestic objectives, and determined the movement’s future successes.

In the mid-1960s, the focus of America was on the debilitating and costly Vietnam War.  Supporting the national agenda in Vietnam and handling the growing social and economic disparities at home split the country.  As the division between internal and external agendas grew, civil rights organizations and their leaders moved past fighting for political power and addressed the growing social problems of poverty, unemployment, inadequate housing, and poor health care throughout the United States. In addition, the movement saw dramatic changes in their structure.  As the Vietnam War continued, African American leaders grew tired of white liberal interference in the movement – shifting white protestors toward ending the conflict in Vietnam. 

With growing civil unrest, President Johnson called for a commission to review the growing crisis in American cities.  The Kerner Commission was established in 1967 to address the issues of poverty and unemployment in an attempt to balance the country, socially and racially.  However, during the summers of 1967 and 1968, violence broke out in Chicago, Watts, and Detroit against poverty, unemployment, poor housing conditions, and a lack of equality in political and social agendas[7]. In 1968, Martin Luther King addressed the plight of the poor throughout the country recording the statistics of $20,000 spent for every enemy killed in Vietnam against $53 spent on every poor person in America[8]. King’s reaction to the Vietnam War drove the division within the civil rights movement between politically charged agendas and social issues.  As King addressed the plight of the nation’s poor, he organized the Poor Peoples March on Washington, D.C.  King saw the Poor Peoples March as a means of obtaining economic power through political power.

As the late 1960s saw increasing economic problems throughout American society, the movement was losing cohesion and more aggressive tactics sponsored by the Black Panthers and followers of Malcolm X surged into political and educational institutions.  African Americans reinforced the call for ‘Black Power’ by calling for an end to gradualism, tokenism, and conformity.  In 1967, social and cultural conditions opened interest in ‘Black Power’ as students of Howard University confronted University officials with changing images of African Americans.  No longer willing to accept a conformist view of Black America, students called for changes in curriculum and administration to advance their cultural heritage[9].

At the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, Black Panthers disrupted the proceedings and caused Americans to view the Democratic Party as chaotic and disruptive.  Combined with the national riots and escalating violence, Nixon’s Republican Party campaign of ‘Law and Order’ squelched the advance of civil rights involvement and drove millions of Americans away from the Democratic Party.  In 1972, the National Black Convention in Gary, Indiana drew over 8,000 people toward a new political agenda against the Democratic Party.  Shouting ‘Nation Time’, the movement reinforced social and economic issues against unfair labor practices, rising unemployment, educational issues, housing, national health and environmental issues.  Instead of approaching only African American plights, the convention aimed at securing social advancements for all Americans[10]. 

Over the course of the civil rights movement, organizations and their leaderships embraced the plight of African Americans from securing access to basic Constitutional rights of citizenship toward identifying themselves culturally and socially independent from white society.  Economic conditions in the United States drove the call for change from the nonviolent method of Martin Luther King toward a direct, aggressive plan to bring about equality and power within the American structure.  The success of individuality moved past political and legislative actions into a solid call for power!

GRADUATE STUDENTS ONLY [NOT AVAILABLE TO UNDERGRADUATES]

3.      To what degree did the Cold War affect the civil rights movement?  Was it the central motivating force in domestic developments pertaining to the civil rights movement?  Or, was the Cold War merely a complicating variable in already exceptionally complex, and long-lived struggle to gain complete freedom and empowerment for blacks?

 

The end of World War II brought about significant changes in the African American struggle to break from the bonds of disfranchisement and subjugation which had strangled their culture and lives for almost one hundred years.  With the creation of organizations like the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), African Americans were attacking the national philosophy of inequality in order to receive the constitutional rights afforded to all U.S. citizens.  While organizations and private citizens demonstrated and conducted boycotts for change internally, internationally, the world was watching the United States.  For generations, the United States had stood for freedom, democracy and justice.  During the war, the United States’ armed forces – black and white combined – fought against the oppression of totalitarianism that gripped Europe and Asia.  With the war over, the world not only embraced the ideals that the United States stood for, but also analyzed its presence in establishing and policing the world’s human rights intervention.

            Globally, the nations of the world were divided between the powers of democracy and with it capitalism sponsored by the United States and the communistic ideology of the Soviet Union.  The resulting ‘Cold War’ between the two superpowers played a tug-of-war campaign in the fight for civil rights in the United States and the world.

The Cold War provided the catalyst for change in America – socially and politically.  At the close of World War II, the United States and the Soviet Union bantered rhetoric in attempt to project supreme authority throughout the world.  In 1947, President Truman addressed Congress and warned, “At the present moment in world history nearly every nation must choose between alternative ways of life” (Dudziak 2004, p.27).  As racial inequities continued at home, the Soviet Union used the images of violence as a means of propaganda against American values.  With the United States seen as a the ‘leader of the free world’, emerging countries like those in Asia and Africa understood the role that America must play in securing the basic freedoms outlined by the Constitution for all its citizens.  As African countries gained their independence from European colonialism, their new leaders identified the duplicitous nature of American ideology of freedom against discrimination of non-white citizens.  In 1947, Dean Rusk wrote an internal memo regarding the newly developed United Nations Commission on Human Rights.  Rusk stated that the “first session of the Subcommission is a very important one to the United States, principally because it deals with a very difficult problem affecting the internal affairs of the United States” (Dudziak 2004, p.43).  In 1961, Dean wrote a memo to Attorney General Robert Kennedy. In his memo, he supported the course of eliminating discrimination and acknowledged, “The principles of racial equality and non-discrimination are imperatives of the American society with its many racial strains.  In the degree to which we ourselves practice those principles our voice will carry conviction in seeking national goals in the conduct of our foreign relations” (Rusk 1961).

As television provided a documentary of violence and intolerance toward African Americans, the world responded.  Many new delegates to the United Nations condemned America for their treatment of African Americans[11].  The Soviet Union used the images of subjugation to enhance their rhetoric against democracy and American values.  Within the global vision, “the costs of racism went even higher during the Cold War. The Soviet Union undercut American appeals to the nations of Africa and Asia by highlighting the ill treatment of blacks in the United States” (Sitkoff 1993, p.16).  At home, mounting concern over Cold War influences led to McCarthyism, black lists and the development of governmental agencies aimed at denouncing Communism.  These organizations took aim at agitators within the United States, especially those organizations and leaders surrounding the civil rights movement, which they believed to be fronts for Communist insurgence.

Throughout the 1950s, the United States was concerned with the growing African Nationalism as each new and independent nation in African provided the image of change through direct action against their oppressors.  The Cold War and international affairs developed the context for understanding African American issues and the civil rights agenda.  International reaction to violence within the South brought condemnation from nations across the globe.  Civil rights leaders utilized the unique international position of the United States to encourage more political and civil rights leaders in Africa, Asia, and India to speak out against American abuses within the United Nation. 

            During the 1960s, the Cold War antagonism between the United States and the Soviet Union moved the administration of John F. Kennedy into action.  During the boycotts and demonstrations in Birmingham and Montgomery, images of demonstrators attacked by police and armed white citizens drew attention to the continuing plight in American cities.  Civil Rights leaders like Martin Luther King understood the role of the media and the impact of global attention to the civil rights campaign as used “the media as a spotlight that exposes and thereby halts secret actions, a light that imprisons the imprisoners”[12].  Malcolm X, while on pilgrimage to Mecca also confronted questions regarding America’s position within the civil rights movement.  While meeting with fellow followers on his Hajj, he indicated, “Constantly, wherever I went, I was asked questions about America’s racial discrimination.  Even with my background, I was astonished at the degree to which the major single image of America seemed to be discrimination” (Haley and Malcolm X, 1964, p.351).

           

            American political fears during the Cold War era forced Presidential administrations from Truman to Johnson to take action against a growing international backlash of anti-American sentiment.  The same fears were used, internally, by civil rights organizations to push the plight of racial injustice past the national scene and into international exposure.  While the Cold War provided the catalyst for non-white nations throughout the world to embrace the efforts of the civil rights movement in America, the combination of world opinion, growing internal tension, and the persistence of civil rights organizations pushed the movement toward success.