44 pages • 1 hour read
Mary L. DudziakCold War Civil Rights: Race and the Image of American Democracy
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2000A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 3-4Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 3 Summary: “Fighting the Cold War with Civil Rights Reform”
By 1947, the President’s Committee on Civil Rights issued a report titled To Secure These Rights. It laid out three reasons for civil rights reform: racial discrimination was immoral; it damaged the economy; and it hurt the United States’ relationships with other nations (79-80). For these reasons, the US State Department under President Truman became involved in advocating for civil rights reform. Truman himself “repeatedly emphasized the importance of civil rights to U.S. foreign affairs” (82). Nonetheless, Truman could not get Congress to pass any significant civil rights legislation like laws against lynching or segregation. Instead, Truman had to focus on issues that he could affect using his presidential powers.
One area Truman intervened in was the military. The activist A. Philip Randolph threatened to encourage African Americans to protest and resist enlistment if segregation in the army was not ended. In response to such protests, in 1948 Truman used Executive Order 9981 to ensure “equality of treatment and opportunity in the armed service without regard to race, color, religion or national origin” (86). Although Truman had refrained from often speaking out in public about civil rights, such actions may have won him the 1948 presidential election. During the Korean War, American military officials also supported efforts to end segregation in the military, finding that segregation was “interfering with military objectives” (88). However, in Congress, opponents of civil rights reform found that legislation like a bill to make the FEPC permanent had been backed by Communists.
Meanwhile, the US Department of Justice under Truman also backed legal cases that allowed for desegregation: “[I]t was Truman’s Justice Department that initiated the government’s participation in the legal battle to overcome Jim Crow” (90). The basis for these interventions was that “crucial national interests were also implicated” (91). The Supreme Court decision, Shelley v. Kraemer, ruled that laws allowing covenants of landowners to sell property only to whites violated “the rights of African Americans to equal protection of the laws” (92). In 1949, the Justice Department was directly involved in another case, Henderson v. United States. The case was over whether or not segregation in railroad dining cars violated the Interstate Commerce Act and possibly the Fourteenth Amendment to the US Constitution. In both cases, the US government argued that practices such as segregation and the restricted sale of property was a matter of national interest in the fight against Communism. The government’s arguments in Henderson v. United States also cited the possibility that African Americans might be radicalized by oppression.
The Supreme Court ruled that segregation on railroad dining cars did violate the Interstate Commerce Act. However, because the Supreme Court ruled this way, the question of whether or not segregation itself violated the Fourteenth Amendment to the US Constitution remained unaddressed. In two further cases involving segregation at universities, the Justice Department “urged the Supreme Court to consider the foreign policy repercussions the Court’s ruling in the cases might have” (95). Similar arguments were made for Supreme Court rulings about segregated public education, especially Bolling v. Sharpe, which dealt with segregation in public schools in Washington, DC. Again, the Justice Department appealed to national security as well as the importance of education for a democratic society. Such arguments appealed to the Supreme Court because they existed at a time when it was widely believed that “national security was at risk, and national security would be enhanced by racial equality” (104).
The famous Supreme Court case that did end public school segregation nationwide, Brown v. Board of Education, did not involve US foreign relations. Dudziak also admits there is no “direct evidence that members of the Supreme Court discussed the impact of racial segregation on Cold War foreign relations” (104) during the Brown v. Board of Education case. However, Justice William O. Douglas in his writings discussed the impact of racism on foreign perceptions of the United States, especially during his trips abroad to India and Pakistan. Likewise other Supreme Court Justices travelled extensively and they “could not have helped but recognize the international concern over American civil rights abuses” (106). When the Supreme Court ruled against school segregation in Brown, the State Department used the news of the ruling in their international propaganda, especially in eastern Europe and China.
The news of the decision provoked a positive response, especially in India and Africa. In the United States itself, the media presented Brown v. Board of Education as “affirming democratic principles” (110). However, pro-segregationist voices in the South such as Governor Herman Talmadge saw desegregation as a Communist plot. Continued violence and discrimination in the South remained a problem reported on by foreign media, but Brown v. Board of Education improved international views of the United States on race. Brown v. Board of Education provided a firm basis to the narrative that, despite a history of racial discrimination, the United States’ “democratic process” (113) led to continued progress in race relations.
Chapter 4 Summary: “Holding the Line in Little Rock”
Since the Brown v. Board of Education decision, there had been several tragedies and civil rights struggles that tarnished the United States’ international image. One of these was the lynching of Emmett Till in Mississippi. However, Dudziak argues that the “civil rights crisis with international impact” (118) was the clash over school desegregation in Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1957. The governor of Arkansas, Orval Faubus, ordered the state’s National Guard to prevent nine Black students from enrolling at Central High School in Little Rock.
Both the current president, Dwight Eisenhower, and the Secretary of State John Foster Dulles recognized what was happening at Little Rock as a blow to the American image. It was widely reported in the international press throughout September with some articles noting that the events would be exploited by Communist propaganda. The US media also noted the wider effects Little Rock had: “U.S. editorial writers and political figures regularly noted the negative impact Little Rock was thought to have on the nation’s standing in the Cold War” (121). The Soviet media drew on facts and images to back a narrative of US racism and fascist violence. One US magazine, Confidential, even accused Governor Faubus of possibly being “part of a communist plot” (124).
An agreement between Eisenhower and Faubus failed. A court order forced Faubus to let the students enter the school. On September 23, 1957, when eight Black students did try to enter Central High, a crowd of pro-segregation protestors became violent. Seven journalists, four of them Black, were attacked. The students had to be secretly removed from the school in the middle of the day. Eisenhower made an official proclamation condemning the continued resistance to desegregation at Little Rock. Privately, Eisenhower had opposed the Brown v. Board of Education decision and was sympathetic to the pro-segregation point of view. However, he disliked the “breakdown of law and order” (130) and Governor Faubus’s defiance. Also, he saw Little Rock as something that would bolster Soviet propaganda.
Eisenhower and Dulles prepared a presidential speech addressed to the people of Arkansas that would emphasize the harm being done to American “prestige and influence, and […] safety” (132). This is why, despite earlier reluctance to do so, Eisenhower ordered federal troops to restore order in Little Rock. Eisenhower’s speech won approval from journalists and politicians around the world, including Brazil, Hong Kong, Uganda, and Mozambique. However, at home in the United States, Faubus and pro-segregation members of Congress would compare Eisenhower’s deployment of federal soldiers in Little Rock to Soviet authoritarianism.
As the presence of federal soldiers in Little Rock declined, the controversy bubbled up again when a judge in Little Rock ruled that desegregation could be postponed for two and a half years. This caused an outcry among African American activists, who pushed for a clear national policy on desegregation. Meanwhile, a court of appeals overturned the delay. Opinions of the United States in Europe backed the idea that cases like Brown v. Board of Education and Little Rock supported the idea that race relations in the United States were improving: “This broader perspective […] could present racial change as a gradual, democratic process and America as being on a trajectory toward ever greater equality” (142).
The State Department prepared an advisory document called “Talking Points to Overcome Adverse Reaction to Little Rock Incident” and the United States Information Agency (USIA) drafted a pamphlet on school desegregation titled The Louisville Story. Both documents argued that, despite the violent opposition, the events in Little Rock were proof of progress. Another point raised in the document is that the United States was not alone in facing conflict from attempts to protect and expand individual rights. They also called attention to the Soviet Union using force to suppress minority rights. However, at the same time, another blow against American prestige happened when the Soviet Union launched Sputnik, the first space satellite.
The conflict over desegregation continued in Arkansas. The state legislature passed laws allowing the closure of desegregated public schools and allowing public funds to go to segregated private schools. In the case Cooper v. Aaron, the Supreme Court backed the school of appeals’ decision to force desegregation without delay. During the case, the Supreme Court unanimously upheld its reasoning from Brown v. Board of Education that school segregation violated the Fourteenth Amendment to the US Constitution: “While Brown had proclaimed that the tenets of American democracy embodied in the Constitution were fundamentally inconsistent with racial segregation, Cooper rescued that principle from the threat of extinction posed by massive resistance” (147).
The Cooper v. Aaron case drew attention from the international press. The media’s focus was on American “federalism” (148), which could spark resistance but also allowed for gradual democratic change. However, social change in Little Rock was limited. By 1960, only five African American students were at Central High School out of a student body of 1,515 (149). The local government of Little Rock allowed parents to have their children reassigned to another school or deny students admission to a school: “School boards now had a cumbersome process that by itself would delay integration” (150). The courts did not challenge this practice. As a result, pupil assignment laws became a model for using bureaucracy to resist segregation elsewhere. The international press also did not notice the impact of pupil assignment laws. The focus for both the government and the international press was not on the reality of desegregation, but on how Brown v. Board of Education and Cooper v. Aaron vindicated US democratic process in combating discrimination.
Chapters 3-4 Analysis
These chapters cover the period from the early years of the Cold War under the Truman administration to the 1950s. Under President Truman, the federal government’s efforts to bolster the civil rights cause were limited to desegregating the military. However, Dudziak also argues that Truman did push the Supreme Court toward ruling against discriminatory laws in cases such as Shelley v. Kraemer and Henderson v. United States. This was an example of The Global Influence on American Civil Rights, as the Truman administration urged the Supreme Court to not only consider legal and domestic matters, but also foreign policy concerns. In a couple of cases, the Justice Department explicitly “urged the Supreme Court to consider the foreign policy repercussions” (95, emphasis added). In the eyes of President Truman and his advisors, “The United States was promoting human rights with the goal of preserving world peace. The nation had to protect civil rights at home to be effective and to strengthen the nation” (86, emphasis added).
Dudziak argues that these early court decisions under Truman led to one of the most pivotal events in the history of American civil rights, Brown v. Board of Education. Besides its significance in the context of the United States, Dudziak also argues that the Brown v. Board of Education case and the violent resistance that broke out in Little Rock, Arkansas was important in terms of The Role of the Cold War in Rights Discourse. International outrage over the violence in Little Rock and the images of Black children being denied an education by a white mob prompted fears over the “international impact” (131) and the potential for such incidents to be used in Soviet propaganda.
Indeed, the Soviet Union’s media did take note, and recounted the controversies and violence around desegregation issues as proof for their views of America as hypocritical and racist. The Department of State and politicians involved in foreign policy, such as John Dulles, became involved in the civil rights issue as a result. Meanwhile, pro-segregation politicians accused the civil rights movement of itself being a Communist plot to undermine the United States (111), revealing the extent to which both sides of the political debate drew upon Cold War tensions to bolster their own views or to discredit their political rivals. Even so, the dominant message pushed by the US government itself was that progress in civil rights reflected the triumph of American values.
At the same time, The Growth of Civil Rights Activism remained a force. As much as fears over Communist propaganda motivated the Eisenhower administration to speak out, the NAACP remained active on the ground promoting school desegregation (124-25). At the same time, they opposed attempts to water down the Brown v. Board of Education decision. Even so, in the end, they could do little against the efforts of local school boards to sabotage desegregation through bureaucratic decisions. The government’s priority was maintaining the positive “narrative of race and democracy” (151), regardless of the day-to-day realities—this showed the limits of civil rights activism against the foreign policy needs of the government.
