Essay On The Effects Of The Jimmy Wilson Trial

“An iron curtain has descended upon Europe.” Winston Churchill said. He couldn’t have been more right. The Marshall Plan was rejected by Stalin, the world was thrown into nuclear threat chaos, communism was ran rampant and sparked fear. The continents were being thrown into another war after experiencing the second world war, and with the threat of nuclear weapons on the very plausible horizon, a wrong political move could result in the mass incineration of millions of innocents caught in the crossfire. The two major parties involved, The United States and the Soviet Union, never exchanged fire with each other on the battlefield, but rather used a complex web of foreign nations that they ultimately puppeteered into a series of different wars

Soviet propaganda often criticized The United States’ racist and blatant discrimination. One particularly strong example of this is the Jimmy Wilson Trial. Jimmy Wilson was a black man prosecuted for the robbery of $1.95 from his white and female employer. He was convicted by an all-white jury and sentenced to death in the electric chair, a crime that didn’t fit the conviction. The case was taken to the Alabama Supreme Court and the conviction was upheld. This wasn’t an outlier case, as evident by the Scottsboro Trial and the Jim Crow Laws. This was just one of the first incidents that the press actually paid attention to. The world was now watching the United States and was waiting to see if the propaganda and horrible discrimination was the truth. News of the trial spread and left the foreign national leaders and the citizens they represented shocked and angry. Petitions and letters of protest immediately followed the news of the trial. The Trades Union Congress of Ghana urged American authorities “to save not only the life of Wilson but also the good name of the United States of America from ridicule and contempt.” John Morsell, a spokesman for the NAACP, thought it would be “a sad blot on the nation” if Wilson was executed. The NAACP was also concerned with the repercussion of the trial should Wilson be executed, “We think the communists will take this and go to town

The civil rights movement got international support for the unfair trial of Jimmy Wilson, forcing the United States to change its laws regarding the racist and bigoted society created by the Jim Crow Laws and unfair and biased prejudice. Technological advancement for the world occurred when Neil Armstrong stepped on the moon and said his famous quote, “That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” Without the Soviet technological competition and the famous Space Race, NASA wouldn’t have been created and funding for educational and scientific programs never would have been raised. Without the Cold War, NATO wouldn’t exist today, protecting the freedom and the rights of the 29 countries that it encompasses. Without NATO, the world could have very easily experienced a third world war that would’ve been the breaking point for many countries. The long lasting positive effects of the Cold War can be seen throughout the world and the thriving countries that were