The Opinions of Mankind: Racial Issues, Press, and Propaganda in the Cold War (review)

The tidal wave of wonderful works on the issue of race, civil rights, and U.S. diplomacy during the Cold War that have appeared in recent years begs the question of whether anything else of significance can be said on the topic. Books and articles by Brenda Gayle Plummer, Penny Von Eschen, Tom Borstelmann, Carol Anderson, Mary Dudziak, Cary Fraser, Gerald Horne, and a host of others have been published in the last decade or so. Any new scholarship, therefore, faces the somewhat daunting task of finding something original and significant to add to the literature or run the risk of reinventing the wheel. The Opinions of Mankind: Racial Issues, Press, and Propaganda in the Cold War, by Richard Lentz and Karla K. Gower, manages to do a bit of the former and, unfortunately, much of the latter.

Lentz and Gower perform a herculean bit of research in scouring U.S. newspapers and magazines, as well as some English-language versions of foreign print media, in pursuit of their main tasks: illustrating how America's race problem was portrayed by the U.S. media to both domestic and foreign audiences and explaining how the coverage simultaneously helped to damage the American image abroad and motivate change and civil rights progress at home in the years from 1946 to 1965. Using a straightforward chronological approach, the chapters focus on major events in the civil rights struggle in the United States and then summarize the press coverage from both U.S. and overseas sources. In doing so, the authors add some interesting information to the existing literature on race and U.S. foreign policy during the ColdWar. Whereas most of the scholarship has focused almost exclusively on African Americans, Lentz and Gower devote separate chapters to the roles played by Native Americans, Latin Americans (and, to a lesser extent, Hispanic Americans), and Asians and Asian Americans in the propaganda battle between the United States and the Communist bloc. This is a terrifically important contribution and will, one hopes, spur additional research.

The book also performs a useful role by collating so much of the press coverage at home and abroad dealing with race and civil rights. The wide-ranging coverage gives extra credence to the argument that the civil rights struggle in the United States was one of international importance. In addition, the focus on press coverage from Communist China is an interesting addition to the discussion, which so often relies entirely on the attacks leveled by Soviet newspapers and magazines.

Despite these contributions, the book too often retreads familiar soil. In part, this can be attributed to the lack of attention to some of the most significant works in the field. The authors include no references to Plummer's work; Von Eschen's 1996 book Race against Empire; Cary Fraser's important article on the Little Rock crisis; books by Borstelmann and Thomas Noer discussing U.S. relations with white minority regimes in Africa; or my 1999 book on African Americans as diplomats in the Cold War. Instead of breaking new ground, therefore, much of the current volume is spent on unnecessarily repeating what is found in these earlier studies. Much the same holds true for the authors' discussion of U.S. racial attitudes toward Latin America. They present arguments as significant contributions without any mention of the works of Frederick Pike, James William Park, or John J. Johnson.

This is particularly unfortunate because other topics, such as South Africa, the fascinating role of people such as Carl Rowan (who served as both unofficial critic of American racism and United States Information Agency director), and the 1964 murders of the three civil rights workers in Mississippi, are either skimmed over or ignored altogether. A particularly troubling example of these kinds of omissions occurs in the chapter dealing with Sputnik and the Little Rock crisis. The infamous "Unfinished Business" exhibit...