Cold War Civil Rights: Race and the Image of American Democracy

“Domestic civil rights crises would quickly become international crises.”

This passage summarizes The Global Influence on American Civil Rights that Dudziak explores throughout her analysis. Cases of extreme discrimination and racist violence would cause the United States to receive negative international attention that could have real political repercussions.

“In addressing civil rights reform from 1946 through the mid-1960s, the federal government engaged in a sustained effort to tell a particular story about race and American democracy: a story of progress, a story of the triumph of good over evil, a story of U.S. moral superiority. The lesson of this story was always that American democracy was a form of government that made the achievement of social justice possible, and that democratic change, however slow and gradual, was superior to dictatorial imposition.”

In many ways, this is a book about narratives and stories. The United States was concerned that racist discrimination and violence provided fuel for the United States’ Communist adversaries on the world stage to make anti-American propaganda. To combat this, United States politicians and ambassadors sought to promote a pro-American narrative about racism being an obstacle that democratic progress could overcome more surely and effectively than “dictatorial imposition.” These concerns introduce The Role of the Cold War in Rights Discourse.

“Soviet propaganda exploited U.S. racial problems, arguing that American professions of liberty and equality under democracy were a sham.”

Soviet propaganda actively exploited discrimination and racial violence in the United States for their own narrative, reflecting The Role of the Cold War in Rights Discourse. Such propaganda represented a major part of the Cold War, where both the Soviet Union and the United States sought to promote positive images of life and society in their own countries to win adherents to their respective causes.