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CHAPTER THREE black-led movement in the early cold war (1946–1950) ‘‘I recall before I went away to World War II, before ’45, I joined the naacp in Times Square station because I believed that this is a good organization. . . . I never joined a political organization, let’s say I was almost, almost many times. But I could not accept the dogma that said ‘This is it’ and you may not question it. You know if you were in the Communist Party, at that time I know, if you had a falling out with somebody or a disagreement, they would attempt to destroy you.’’∞ Those candid memories by postal union activist Milt Rosner were recorded by oral historian Dana Schecter in 1976. Rosner, who was white, was comparing what he and many others considered the rigid, sectarian practices by the cpusa to the naacp that ‘‘organized’’ him at the post o≈ce. In the 1940s Rosner was also a member of nfpoc’s New York City Local 10. The naacp—where he found a political home—was itself undergoing a ‘‘growth spurt’’ of mainly black working-class membership and perspective that also continued to attract white allies like Rosner.≤ But that rising level of protest by the naacp, the nape, and others against Jim Crow was arrayed against an institution far from dead. In fact, Jim Crow was sti√ening its resistance and broadening its appeal. Anticommunism—which by 1950 was popularly termed ‘‘McCarthyism’’ after its archetypal advocate Senator Joseph McCarthy (R-Wisc.)—formed a key part of that right-wing reaction, with white supremacist ‘‘Americanism’’ a core value. The federal government was concerned with its image in its postwar battle with communism for global hegemony in what came to be known as the Cold War. Yet black postal workers were more vulnerable than whites to domestic anticommunist campaigns. This was largely because the fight for equality was seen by many Americans as subversive. Historians continue to debate the Cold War’s role in the civil rights movement . For example, Mary Dudziak posits U.S. government political vulnerability , while Carol Anderson thinks the naacp lost ground following World War II to southern white supremacist red-baiting and so was forced to scale black-led movement | 75 back its ‘‘human rights’’ struggle into a weaker one for ‘‘civil rights.’’ I would combine those two ideas to argue that the naacp compromised its more comprehensive ‘‘human rights’’ focus but was still able to use ‘‘civil rights’’ as a weapon to shame the United States into making progressive public policy changes. Looking back, ‘‘civil rights’’ seems a more narrow focus than ‘‘human rights.’’ Yet in everyday use it often carried the same meaning, much as ‘‘Jim Crow’’ in early 1940s popular parlance meant not just segregation (as it came to be by the mid-1950s) but all forms of white supremacy.≥ Nevertheless, anticommunist reaction severely set back the black-left-labor coalition that had been forming and which black postal workers had been trying to e√ect. It was not just heavy-handed Cold War–era government repression that fractured that coalition, however, but a reactionary coalition of opposition that included white unionists. In turn, the naacp and the cio tragically made themselves junior partners of anticommunist racial liberalism, while the cpusa practically wrote the script for its own demise and triumph for its accusers with its rigid (when it was not vacillating), secretive, pro-Soviet, and often sectarian political perspectives. In spite of all these problems, there were survivors from that shipwrecked coalition that included black postal workers who made social and political equality a primary goal of labor struggles , and economic equality a priority for civil rights struggles.∂ Scholars today also debate precedence versus continuity in tracing back to the 1940s a number of important and enduring issues: the origins of the 1960s civil rights struggle, serious defeats and compromises in the cause of organized labor, a chilling anticommunism that set a new benchmark for state political repression, and a new social contract with the working class that included a substantial di√erential between the relative wealth and opportunity of blacks and whites.∑ This origins debate serves to remind us that there has always been ablackfreedommovement,andthatmodernversionsofitcantracetheirideas and tactics to prior struggles.∏ But it is just as important to avoid creating a simplistic construction of continuity between the 1930s–1940s movements and what sociologist Aldon Morris calls the ‘‘modern civil rights movement’’ of the 1950s–1960s.π Class, ideological, and tactical...

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