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Cold War Civil Rights: Race and the Image of American Democracy
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Background
Socio-Historical Context: African American Civil Rights
The history of African American civil rights begins with the enslavement of Africans that had been practiced in the United States from its founding, especially in the South. In the aftermath of the US Civil War (1861-1865), the Fourteenth Amendment to the US Constitution legally abolished slavery. The period of Reconstruction was supposed to see the Southern United States reintegrated into the union, as well as the establishment of some civil rights for formerly enslaved people who were now free. However, after a period of seeing formerly enslaved people elected to political office and winning some rights, there was a violent backlash from white Southern politicians. This saw the rise of the Jim Crow laws, which forced Black people to be segregated from whites and limited the rights of Black people, including their right to vote.
There were a number of prominent African American activists in the post-Reconstruction era, including Booker T. Washington. There were a few victories, such as the establishment of Black colleges in the South and in Washington, DC, the spread of successful Black businesses mainly in urban areas, and the founding of the NAACP. However, there were also outbreaks of violence by white mobs against Black people, such as the 1898 Wilmington Massacre, the 1906 Atlanta race riot, and the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre.
By the time the United States entered World War II, many Black people in the Southern United States could not vote. Laws enforced segregation throughout the South, while even in the North segregation was practiced by many businesses, just without the backing of the actual laws. At the end of World War II, these legal restrictions on African American rights still existed, alongside social and cultural discrimination against African Americans in both the North and the South. By the 1950s, a civil rights movement had begun to grow in reaction against the ongoing racial discrimination. It would continue to gather strength throughout the 1960s.
Historical Context: The Cold War
The Cold War is the term given to the conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union in the decades after World War II, when the two countries became the leading rival superpowers in the world. It was called the Cold War because there was no actual direct military conflict between the US and the Soviet Union. Instead, it was a war of ideas, namely the democracy and capitalism of the United States against the authoritarianism and communism of the Soviet Union. The fighting was generally done through propaganda or through wars fought with or between proxy nations.
The Cold War affected not just the politics of the United States, but its society and culture as well. From the late 1940s onward, American political discourse was often gripped by the “Red Scare”: the idea that Communists could—and were—infiltrating American society to undermine its capitalistic and democratic systems. The most famous manifestation of this cultural fear became known as “McCarthyism,” named for the senator Joseph McCarthy, who led a campaign of accusation and investigation of many left-wing public figures, including Hollywood stars. Some conservative politicians even used the specter of supposed Communist influence to stoke fears against public health initiatives, such as vaccination, and other social welfare reforms. Since both the Soviet Union and the US were heavily armed with nuclear missiles, fear of a nuclear war and the possibility of an apocalypse after such a confrontation also shaped popular culture in both countries.
Several conflicts and near-conflicts are considered key moments in the Cold War. The first was the Korean War (1950-1953), which was fought between North Korea, supported by Communist China and the Soviet Union, and South Korea, which had backing from the United States. Later, there was the Cuban Missile Crisis. When a Communist government came to power in Cuba in 1959, relations between Cuba and the US broke down. In 1962, the US blockaded Cuba to prevent Soviet nuclear missiles from being shipped there. The stand-off heightened fears of an all-out war, but the conflict was peacefully resolved.
Finally, there was the Vietnam War (1955-1975). This war saw the United States fighting in Vietnam in defense of the capitalist government of South Vietnam against North Vietnam, a rival Communist government. It ended with the victory of North Vietnam, which took control of all of Vietnam. The Cold War finally ended with the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991.
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