In this installment of the Highlight Series, The Life of a Historian presents a quick summary and review of…
Dudziak, Mary L. Cold War Civil Rights: Race and Image of American Democracy. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000.
Affiliate Disclosure
Cold War Civil Rights: Race and the Image of American Democracy
The story of civil rights and the Cold War is in part the story of a struggle over the narrative of race and democracy.” 1
A work by historian and legal scholar Mary L. Dudziak.
An Abridged History of Cold War Civil Rights
As with most works of scholarship, seemingly, Dudziak’s Cold War Civil Rights germinated from another process of intellectual inquiry. During law school, Dudziak spent a summer working for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). For an ongoing school desegregation litigation, the ACLU needed her to construct a history of segregation in Topeka, Kansas. This project engendered Dudziak’s interest in understanding how Topeka felt about its role in the broader civil rights movement.
Initially, Dudziak intended “to write a community-centered study” on this topic to serve as her Ph.D. dissertation. 2 However, her curiosity in a school board member’s use of ‘American practice’ when discussing desegregation guided her to investigate why. This scholarly exploration led to connections between the Cold War, foreign and domestic policies, and the civil rights movement.
Eventually, and years later, Dudziak compiled her research and thoughts on this topic to produce Cold War Civil Rights, a work that internationalizes and reframes the civil rights movement within the Cold War.
Purpose & Argument
Purpose
Dudziak’s “Cold War Civil Rights traces the emergence, the development, and the decline of Cold War foreign affairs as a factor in influencing civil rights policy by setting a U.S. history topic within the context of Cold War world history.” 3
By reframing the civil rights movement within the broader Cold War history, Dudziak internationalizes a seemingly domestic topic to illuminate on the interconnections of national and global affairs. Thus, her approach adds another layer of analysis to understanding both the civil rights movement and the Cold War.
Arguments
In her introduction, Dudziak states “World War II marked a transition point in American foreign relations, American politics, and American.” 4 Her arguments throughout Cold War Civil Rights emerge from this starting point. Even though she does not detail why–as it is out of the scope of this work–Dudziak does make clear the period of history that followed World War II offered a strikingly different relationship for America at home and abroad. America, unlike before, stood as one of the world powers in the newly established bi-polar world. This led to a conscientious effort to define ‘American’ as unique and wholly superior to the Soviet Union (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics or USSR).
As a result, politicians and citizens alike placed American democracy on a moral pedestal above the tyrannical and oppressive system of communism. According to Dudziak, this simultaneously had a positive and negative effect on social movements within the United States. The Cold War climate led to restrictions on “discussions of broad-based social change, or a linking of race and class.” 5 Also, it facilitated the denial of discourse on the relationship between racism and colonialism.
However, the politics of the Cold War, even with its constrictions, created a narrow avenue that enabled the passing of selected civil rights reforms and legislations. Dudziak’s arguments rest on this foundation. She illustrates how racism at home undermined America’s international leadership and claim as leader of the free world. USSR, and even allies, routinely publicized events that displayed America’s hypocrisy through its treatment of its African American citizens. In doing so, Dudziak claims that much of the federal government’s receptive response to grass-roots efforts for civil rights during this time derived from an international policy perspective.
Methodology
Dudziak examines the civil rights movement through the reactions of the international community and the responses of the US federal government. As a result, she takes a top-down approach, bringing national and international leaders to the forefront. Specifically, she addresses the actions and rhetoric of presidents and members of the US Department of State.
Although Dudziak’s narrative seemingly ignores the agency and determination of everyday African Americans and grassroots activists, she addresses this concern early. She states that “this focus on particular events and often on prominent leaders should not be seen as an effort to privilege a top-down focus as ‘the’ story of civil rights history. The international perspective is not a substitute for the rich body of civil rights scholarship but another dimension that sheds light on those important and well-told stories.” 6 Furthermore, throughout her work, Dudziak repeatedly emphasizes the fact that international criticism and US response would not have occurred without African Americans actively fighting for racial equality.
Sources
Dudziak utilizes a variety of sources including foreign and domestic newspapers, State Department records, publications from the United States Information Agency (USIA), diplomatic correspondences, and Supreme Court briefs. As noted before, her sources reflect her ‘top-down’ approach. However, it also enables a thorough analysis of the federal government’s assessment and response to the international reaction and reception of the American civil rights movement within the geopolitical context of the Cold War.
Other Works by Mary L. Dudziak
• War Time: An Idea, Its History, Its Consequences
• Exporting American Dreams: Thurgood Marshall’s African Journey
Additional Reviews of Cold War Civil Rights
• H-Net (Humanities and Social Sciences Online)