Legal historian Mary Dudziak, author of the book Cold War Civil Rights: Race and the Image of American Democracy, explores impacts of Cold War foreign affairs on American civil rights. Dudziak argues that the United States government pushed for civil rights reforms due to risk’s to the nation’s alleged moral supremacy. Dissecting the so-called Negro problem as propaganda muscle during the Cold War resulting in the mistreatment of persons of color.
Dudziak uses the book The Unsteady March: The Rise and Decline of Racial Equality in America, written by Philip A. Klinkner with Rogers A. Smith to underscore the point that civil rights activists’ were aware of racism during and after WWI. However, the time for strong social change did not occur until WWII with the segregation of
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Thorne discusses how Winston Churchill spoke out against United States segregation policies. Dudziak uses this information to indicate that England, the nation’s biggest ally, was against U.S. military racial discrimination policies.
Dudziak uses court records from the case of Arkansas Governor Faubus versus the United States in 1958. To show how racial discrimination practices had come to the attention of President Dwight D. Eisenhower after a federally funded public high school in Little Rock, Arkansas had obstructed black students from attendance.
And Dudziak refers to documents from the National Archives in which U.S. embassy officials in Moscow, during the Cold War, wrote to Secretary of States. Asserting their beliefs that the Soviet Union’s preoccupation with America’s Negro problem was serving Soviet political goals in destroying the United States. Which strengthens Dudziak’s theory on how the United States, during the Cold War, saw the importance of fighting racial discrimination countering growing worldwide anti-American