Foreign Policy and Civil Rights

Cold War Civil Rights: Race and the Image of American Democracy. By Mary L. Dudziak. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000. 352 pages. $39.50 (cloth). $18.95 (paper).

IN Cold War Civil Rights, MARY L. DUDZIAK PLACES THE STUDY OF THE POST-World War II Civil Rights Movement in the context of United States foreign relations. In doing so, Dudziak expands the scope of civil rights history and offers new insight into why the federal government saw African American civil rights as integral to its foreign policy mission.

While there have been a growing number of books that explore how civil rights activists used the cold war strategically to wage civil rights struggles, Dudziak's study is the first to show how the federal government's commitment to Cold War foreign policy seasoned its support for civil rights reforms. ¹ Although civil rights activists had long relied on international audiences for support and solidarity, Dudziak shows that the Cold War's reliance on preserving American prestige abroad made international observers' sentiments integral to foreign policy. Within this context, racial discrimination, especially when it was broadcast to international observers, became problematic to the Cold War effort itself. Moreover, African American civil rights leaders capitalized on the importance of foreign perceptions of the United States by publicizing acts of racial violence abroad. African American participation as soldiers and as workers at home allowed civil rights leaders to claim that they were an indispensable part of American society, and especially of the war effort. Moreover, World War II was driven by rhetoric of anti-fascism and democracy that made practices of discrimination against African American workers at home, and soldiers abroad, contradictory.

Dudziak begins her study in the postwar years, when American foreign policy makers were framing Cold War policy. As the United States entered a Cold War with the Soviet Union, it made domestic civil rights a foreign policy imperative, and went to great lengths to present itself to international audiences as democratic and committed to anti-racism. Dudziak's study is among the first to show how the federal government's relationship to civil rights litigation and legislation was shaped by the international imperative to manage its international image. After World War II, Dudziak explains, "the notion that the nation as a whole had a stake in racial equality was widespread. . . . The need to address international criticism gave the federal government an incentive to promote social change at home" (7, 12). Yet, Dudziak also argues that the federal government was willing to address civil rights only in the narrowest ways; it avoided massive structural changes and avoided challenges to civil rights that linked race and class. Hence Dudziak views federal intervention as limited because it served not only to perpetuate limited reforms but also to contain radical civil rights victories.

Dudziak traces American foreign policy makers' attempt to shape foreign audience perceptions of racism in the United States. The study is organized into chapters that examine how the U.S. State Department and the United States Information Agency (USIA) managed the American story of race for foreign audiences from the postwar era through Lyndon Johnson's administration. Dudziak shows that as the Cold War developed, the United States, more than ever, relied on creating prestige abroad in order to convince the developing world to create markets for the United States. Within this context, civil rights arguments that illuminated racism in the United States threatened to jeopardize American influence abroad. Dudziak shows that newspaper coverage of U.S. racism in foreign newspapers caused concern for U.S. foreign policy advisers. Especially disconcerting was how the Soviet Union publicized civil rights protests to the world.

Although foreign policy makers could not eradicate racism at home, they worked diligently to manage the story of racism to foreign audiences. Dudziak examines public affairs announcements that were released by the USIA. The USIA prepared strategic materials for foreign audiences that framed racism as a relic of the...