Lecture 12 - The global color line: decolonization and civil rights

Question 1

Executive Order 8802

Answer 1

President Roosevelt issued Executive Order 8802 in 1941, prohibiting discrimination in the defense industry under contract to federal agencies

Question 2

Race relations in motion: Jackie Robinson

Answer 2

♣ 1941 Drafted in 761° «black panthers» Tank Batallion
♣ 1944 charged for not sitting in the back of (unsegregated) military bus
♣ Aquitted, but could not join his batallion overseas
♣ 1947: first black player in MLB

Question 3

Segregation at home: white blood, black blood

Answer 3

• Charles Drew: leading scientist in the preservation of blood, president of American Red Cross ‘blood bank’
• Black donors were rejected, then were accepted on a Jim Crow basis, ‘so that those receiving transfusions may be given plasma from blood of their own race’

Question 4

Harry Truman and civil rights

Answer 4

• From Missouri, slave-owning grandparents
• Search for middle way between segregationists and equalitarians
• Forced to choose by post-war polarization on race

Question 5

Truman’s CR record

Answer 5

• 1946 creation of the President’s Committee on Civil Rights
• 1947 first president to address NAACP: “our case for democracy should rest… on practical evidence that we have been able to put our house in order”
• 2/1948 Civil Rights message to Congress
• 7/48 Executive Order 9981 to de-segregate armed forces
• 11/48 speech to a crowd of 65k in Harlem
• 11/48 reelection with crucial support of Northern blacks (vs. Southern Democrats)

Question 6

Executive Order 9981

Answer 6

07/1948 - de-segregate armed forces

Question 7

Demise of Trumans commitment to CR after 1948:

Answer 7

o Alliance with European powers who were still colonial powers within NATO
o Korean War
o Rise of McCarthyism

Question 8

McCarthyism

Answer 8

Practice of making accusations of subversion or treason without proper regard for evidence. The term has its origins in the period in the United States known as the Second Red Scare, lasting roughly from 1950 to 1956 and characterized by heightened political repression against communists, as well as a campaign spreading fear of their influence on American institutions and of espionage by Soviet agents.

Question 9

How the 1940s set a precedent in CR?

Answer 9

♣ Awareness of international/transnational dimension of CR
♣ Crucial role of African Americans’ mobilization, vote (agency)
♣ CR Progress → US international standing and credibility
♣ Limits: domestic (Southern Dems) and international (antiComm. alliances, ideology)

Question 10

The 1950s Domestic

Answer 10

• Conservative ascendancy
• Limited political leverage for CR advocates
• Emphasis on legal v. political reaction (NAACP, Thurgood Marshall)

Question 11

The 1950s International

Answer 11

• USSR, China and globalization of the CW
• Decolonization in Global South
• “Third World” agency versus cold war policy

Question 12

Brown vs. Board of Education

Answer 12

(1954), was a landmark United States Supreme Court case in which the Court declared state laws establishing separate public schools for black and white students to be unconstitutional.

Question 13

Dennis v. United States

Answer 13

(1951) upheld prosecution of members of the Communist party based on evidence that they had read and discussed Marx and Engels

Question 14

Harisiades v. Shaughnessy

Answer 14

(1952) upheld deportation of immigrants for past Communist party membership

Question 15

«Brown» instrumental to cold war #1

Answer 15

The existence of discrimination toward minority groups in the United States has an adverse effect upon our relations with other countries. Racial discrimination furnishes grist for the Communist propaganda mills, and it raises doubts even among friendly nations as to the intensity of our devotion to the democratic faith.
(US Dept. of Justice brief re: Brown v. Board of Education)

Question 16

«Brown» instrumental to cold war #2

Answer 16

[The Supreme Court] has ruled that segregated public schools are un-Constitutional and therefore un-American … It comes at a moment when our leadership of the free peoples demands the best of what America is and can be … We feel that segregation is not an American practice.
(New York Herald Tribune, European edition, May 21 1954)

Question 17

Eisenhower and the global color line:

damage control

Answer 17

• Suez (1956): opposition to French/Briish neocolonial” move against Egyptian control on the canal
• Little Rock (Arkansas, 1957): national guard against white supremacists opposing school integration
• Congo (1960): US support to UN expedition against secession of Kantaga (backed by Belgium)

Question 18

March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom

Answer 18

08/1963 - “I have a dream speech” MLK

Question 19

Radicalization in the 1960’s at home

Answer 19

o Assertiveness of CR movement (March on Washington, 08.1963)
o Radicalization: CORE, SNCC, Freedom Riders
o White supremacists’ backlash in Southern States

Question 20

Radicalization in the 1960’s abroad (CR)

Answer 20

o Assertiveness of the Third World and non-aligned movements (Belgrade in 1961)
o Radicalization in Africa: Congo and Angola
o South Africa as an independent republic: apartheid, ANC resistance

Question 21

JFK containment of racial conflict DOMESTIC

Answer 21

o Rhetorical support for racial equality
o Symbolic gestures: inviting black leaders to the WH
o Appointment of Af-am in federal government and judiciary
o Reluctance to confront Southern Dems in Congress or supremacists in the South
o Continuity: FBI (Hoover) and CIA (Dulles)

Question 22

JFK containment of racial conflict INTERNATIONAL

Answer 22

o Rhetorical support for African decolonization
o Critique of colonialist repression (ex. Portugal in Angola) and apartheid in South Africa)
o Reluctance to push sanctions against South African regime
o Continuity: weapons to Portugal (NATO member)

Question 23

MLK “Letter from a Birmingham Jail”

Answer 23

04/1963 - Disappointment with white moderate: too devoted to ‘order’ than to justice

Question 24

JFK’s domestic evolution and limits

Answer 24

♣ FROM focus on Third World/Africa TO Europe-first strategy (ex. Berlin)
♣ FROM support decolonization TO support European/white allies
♣ FROM containment racial tensions TO promotion racial justice at home.

Question 25

CR radicalization in a global context

Answer 25

* MLK and Malcolm X are pretty similar in global standpoint: idea that the American CR movement was part of a larger process * Clay v. US (1967): dodging draft because it was a war against non-white people * MLK, “The Casualties of the War in Vietnam” (02/1967): forcefully opposing war; 100% citizen in warfare and only 50% on American soil

Question 26

Civil Rights/Cold War: a complex relation

Answer 26

- Limited convergence of interests - CW fueled and harmed CRM (NAACP/Malcolm X) - CRM as product of grassroots activism and CW context - CRM benefited from and undermined cold war imperatives (Brown/Vietnam)

Question 27

Malcolm X, “An Appeal to the African Heads of State” speech of July 1964 (Cairo)

Answer 27

- ‘Your problem will never be fully solved until ours are solved; you will never be fully respected until we are also respected; you will never be recognized as free human beings until we are” - This is a problem of humanity, not a problem of civil rights but of human rights

Question 28

Robert Kennedy, “Day of Affirmation” speech of June 1964 (Cape Town)

Answer 28

His Call To Do ‘The Right Thing’: "We must recognize the full human equality of all of our people before God, before the law, and in the councils of government. We must do this, not because it is economically advantageous, although it is; not because of the laws of God command it, although they do; not because people in other lands wish it so. We must do it for the single and fundamental reason that it is the right thing to do."

Question 29

The Congo Crisis

Answer 29

1960-1965 Constituting a series of civil wars, the Congo Crisis was also a proxy conflict in the Cold War in which the Soviet Union and United States supported opposing factions. Around 100,000 people are believed to have been killed during the crisis.