What We Are Reading Today: Cold War Civil Rights
Author: Mary L. Dudziak
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 US sought to polish its image abroad, yet how a focus on appearances over substance limited the nature and extent of progress.
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