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How Cold War Impacted The Civil Rights Movement

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How The Cold War Impacted the Civil Rights Movement
The Cold War and the fight for Civil Rights in the 1960s are two historical events in U.S. history that individually are viewed as being vital to the development of the U.S. in the twentieth century. However, it is often overlooked how much these two events intertwined and affected each other. Realistically, the Cold War provided both setback and initiative to move forward within the Civil Rights movement. In some aspects, the factors of the Cold War, such as McCarthyism, encouraged more segregation and discrimination. However, in other ways, this discrimination encouraged the people to fight harder and even made others able to see the hypocrisy of the government and its philosophies of …show more content…

The events of the country due to the war is what made it visible to many that there were serious issues regarding inequality in the United States. The Cold War became the fuel of Civil Rights activists and leaders to pursue their cause despite a larger force going against them. The U.S. faced backlash not only from their people within their own country, but the people from surrounding countries as well. It doesn’t look good for a country to fight for the rights of those in other countries while simultaneously neglecting the rights of people in their own nation. The Cold War impacted the Civil Rights Movement because of the practice of McCarthyism and how it damaged the hopes of Civil Rights activists, the criticism faced by the U.S. due to its segregation policies, and …show more content…

He was a graduate from Harvard Law School and worked on cases such as the Angelo Herndon Case and the Scottsboro Boys Trial. As the Cold War progressed, Davis and his political affiliations came under suspicion and he would be sent to prison for violating the anticommunist Smith Act, which made it a federal crime to advocate overthrowing the U.S. government (Woods). Because of how strict the United States government became in regards to fending off Communism, anyone who was speculated to support Communism, regardless of whether it was based on substantial proof or not, would be segregated and blacklisted (How Did the Cold War Affect Civil Liberties in the US?). McCarthyism did not make the fight for desegregation easier however, it did improve the morale of the people and make them fight even

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