Black History

User Generated

LgurYa0g97

Humanities

Description

How did the economic policies of the conservative presidencies during the Cold War era effect the majority of Black people? What about the conservative social policies? How were Black men and women treated with regard to the hysteria against Communism (the “Red Scare”)?What effects did the Cold War era socioeconomic policies had on Black people?

Try to include these two attachments into the prompt.

Unformatted Attachment Preview

COMMENTARY: Who Lost the Cold War? Africans and African Americans Author(s): GERALD HORNE Source: Diplomatic History, Vol. 20, No. 4 (Fall 1996), pp. 613-626 Published by: Oxford University Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/24913321 Accessed: 28-09-2017 23:04 UTC JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://about.jstor.org/terms Oxford University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Diplomatic History This content downloaded from 137.110.192.6 on Thu, 28 Sep 2017 23:04:58 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms GERALD HORNE COMMENTARY Who Lost the Cold War? Africans and African Americans The story is well known about the man who jumps off the Empire State Building in New York City and as he passes the thirtieth floor shouts, "So far, so good." This story comes to mind when considering the linked themes of race and foreign policy raised in these three arresting articles. For the fact is that the Cold War did play a substantial role in eroding the formidable barriers of Jim Crow and colonialism in Africa. How could Washington credibly charge Moscow with human rights violations when African Americans in this nation and Africans in their own land-at the behest of U.S. allies in Western Europe-were treated like third-class citizens? In turn, newly enfranchised African American*; rnnlH more effertivelv trnmnpt the raiicp nf their hrethren in Africa languishing under colonial rule-and vice versa. "So far, so good However, an essential component of this process was an internationa and domestic left that championed the basic rights of Africans and African Americans particularly.1 The weakening of this left-a result of how th Cold War concluded-has done more than contribute to a situation where Africa is largely thought to be marginalized: Sierra Leone, Rwanda, Bu rundi, and Liberia are just the most extreme examples of a catastrophe that has befallen a continent that could once court East and West to its advan tage.2 The decline of a secular left also has prompted the rise of various forms of a religious "fundamentalism" that plays no small role in the tearing apart of Sudan, Nigeria, Uganda, and a good deal of North Africa.3 Strik 1. Allison Blakely, Russia and the Negro: Blacks in Russian History and Thought (Washington, 1986); Jane Degras, ed., The Communist International, 1919-1943, Documents (London, 1971); Gerald Home, Black Liberation!Red Scare: Ben Davis and the Communist Party (London, 1994); James Goodman, Stories of Scottsboro (New York, 1994); Philip S. Foner and James S. Allen, eds., American Communism and Black Americans: A Documentary History, 1919-1929 (Philadelphia, 1987); Robert Hill, ed., The Crusader, 6 vols. (New York, 1987); W. Alphaeus Hunton, Decision in Africa: Sources of Current Conflict (New York, i960); Ronald Kasrils, "Armed and Dangerous My Undercover Struggle against Apartheid (Oxford, 1993). 2. Howard Adelman and John Sorenson, eds., African Refugees: Development Aid and Repatria tion (Boulder, 1994); Anton Andereggen, France's Relationship with Subsaharan Africa (Westport, 1994); Mohamed Sahnoun, Somalia: The Missed Opportunities (Washington, 1994). 3. Mark Juergensmeyer, The New Cold War? Religious Nationalism Confronts the Secular State (Berkeley, 1993); Said Adejumobi and Abubakar Momoh, eds., The Political Economy of Nigeria under Military Rule: 1984-191)3 (Harare, 1995). Diplomatic History, Vol. 20, No. 4 (Fall 1996). © 1996 The Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations (SHAFR). Published by Blackwell Publishers, 238 Main Street, Cambridge MA, 02142, USA, and 108 Cowley Road, Oxford, OX4 iJF, UK. 613 This content downloaded from 137.110.192.6 on Thu, 28 Sep 2017 23:04:58 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 614 : DIPLOMATIC HISTORY ingly, this same phenomenon also has afflicted African Americans, reeling from skyrocketing rates in incarceration, attacks on the Voting Rights Act and affirmative action, and stagnant wages that have impacted them dispro portionately. + Yes, "we all lost the Cold War" but some-who had further to fall-lost more than others. Only in Southern Africa-South Africa in particular-does it appear that Africans of whatever continent have emerged from the post-Cold War rub ble with improved prospects. And, most revealing, it is here that the South African Communist Party rules in alliance with the African National Con gress and the Congress of South African Trade Unions in the kind of left labor alliance spurned by the NAACP when it fatefully threw in its lot with the Truman White House and joined the anti-Communist crusade.'" In 1948, such an alliance may have seemed like the only viable alternative. But as the NAACP lies in tatters in the 1990s, along with the community it purports to represent, the time is long past due for historians to evaluate fateful historical decisions not only with keen hindsight but with keen foresight as well. Meanwhile, the "liberation" of what was the Soviet Union has brought in its wake rapidly declining living standards, genocidal war in the Caucasus, and the rise of a Mafia class that has spread its tentacles to our shores.6 The expenditures necessary to accomplish this "victory" have helped to create a multi-trillion-dollar debt for the nation, while building up now-formidable rivals in Beijing, Tokyo, and Seoul who will continue to present substantial challenges to U.S. foreign policy well into the next century-and beyond.' It simply will not do-even for a historian-to suggest that Edith 4- Gerald Home, " 'Myth' and the Making of'Malcolm X,' " American Historical Review 98 (April 1993): 440-30; idem, "Blowback: Playing the Nationalist Card Backfires," in After Political Correctness: The Humanities and Society in the 1990s, ed. Christopher Newfield and Ronald Strickland (Boulder, 1995), 79-89. 5. Fatima Meer, Higher than Hope: A Biography of Nelson Mandela (London, 1990); Basil Davidson, Joe Slovo, and Anthony R. Wilkinson, Southern Africa: The New Politics of Revolution (Harmondsworth, 1976); Austin M. Chakaodza, International Diplomacy in Southern Africa: From Reagan to Mandela (London, 1990); Allister Sparks, Tomorrow is Another Country: The Inside Story of South Africa's Road to Change (New York, 1995); Alex Boraine, Janet Levy, and Ronel Scheffer, Dealing with the Past: Truth and Reconciliation in South Africa (Cape Town, 1994). 6. Stephen Handelman, Comrade Criminal: Russia's New Mafia (New Haven, 1994); Claire Sterling, Thieves' World: The Threat of the New Global Network of Organized Crime (New York, 1994); Suzanne Goldenberg, Pride of Small Nations: The Caucasus and Post-Soviet Disorder (Atlan tic Highlands, NJ, 1994); Charles Undeland and Nicholas Piatt, The Central Asian Republics: Fragments of Empire, Magnets of Wealth (New York, 1994). For a prescient view of the post-1989 events see Jonathan Boe, "American Business: The Response to the Soviet Union, 1933—1947" (Ph.D. diss., Stanford University, 1979). 7. Eamonn Fingleton, "Japan's Invisible Leviathan," Foreign Affairs 74 (March/April 1995): 69-85; Frank McNeil, Democracy in Japan: The Emerging Global Concern (New York, 1994); Lillian Craig Harris, China Considers the Middle East (New York, 1993); Young Whan Kihl, ed., Korea and the World: Beyond the Cold War (Boulder, 1994); Robert E. Bedeski, The Transformation of South Korea: Reform and Reconstitution in the Sixth Republic under Roh Tae Woo, 1987-1992 (New York, 1994). This content downloaded from 137.110.192.6 on Thu, 28 Sep 2017 23:04:58 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms Who Lost the Cold War? : 615 Sampson and the NAACP took the proper course when they joined the anti-Communist crusade while ignoring the "downstream" consequences such a decision has had. Shouting "so far, so good" at the thirtieth floor is insufficient. Laville and Lucas refer to a "national interest" during the Cold War. But the question must be asked, "whose national interest?" I understand fully why certain Wall Street investors-or more precisely, Berlin speculators may celebrate the opportunity to exploit new labor markets and mineral resources in Eastern Europe, while picking up privatized enterprises on the cheap; I am less sure about why an African American community that is predominantly working class and whose jobs now have yet another site to be shipped to overseas should celebrate. The disintegration of the Soviet Union has not so much lessened the so-called nuclear threat as it has wid ened it, as crucial technologies are now subject to a gigantic and chaotic yard-sale. Indeed, the fundamental question that Laville and Lucas and Anderson, to an extent, must confront is this: Presumably "Stalinism" was sufficient reason for African Americans to join Washington's Cold War, while looking the other way as stalwarts like W. E. B. Du Bois and Paul Robeson were persecuted for their refusal to participate. Fine. But if "Stalinism" discredited socialism, why did slavery, the slave trade, and racism not discredit capital ism?8 If Soviet intervention in Eastern Europe discredited socialism, then why did U.S. backing of apartheid South Africa not discredit capitalism?' Are we saying that what happens to Africans can be rationalized away, but that what happens to Europeans must be held to a higher standard? Are we saying that the enslavement and persecution of Africans is less important than what occurred in Eastern Europe? Are we saying that it is justifiable 8. Peter Kolchin, American Slavery: 1619—187/ (New York, 1993); Theodore Dwight Weld, American Slavery as It Is: Testimony of a Thousand Witnesses (New York, 1968); Eric Williams, Capitalism and Slavery (Chapel Hill, 1944); Maurice Glele-Ahanhanzo, Report on Contemporary Forms of Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia, and Related Intolerance on His Mission to the United States of America from 9 to 22 October 1994 (New York, 1995); Civil Rights Congress, We Charge Genocide! The Historical Petition to the United Nations for Relief from a Crime of the United States Government against the Negro People (New York, 1951). Anderson refers to "cynical and opportunistic Soviet support" as a rationale for the NAACP failing to press the United Nations about human rights claims of African Americans. However, if blacks were to subject real or potential allies to a test of purity before collaborating, then they would have refused no doubt to join the North-which countenanced racism and segregation and worse-during the Civil War; or perhaps they should have reconsidered the decision to collaborate with the Dixiecrat Secretary of State James Byrnes or his boss, the descendant of slaveowners - Harry S. Truman-who occupied the White House. 9. Thomas Borstelmann, Apartheid's Reluctant Uncle: The United States and Southern Africa in the Early Cold War (New York, 1993); Thomas J. Noer, Cold War and Black Liberation: The United States and White Rule in Africa, 1948—1968 (Columbia, MO, 1985); George M. Frederickson, Black Liberation: A Comparative History of Black Ideologies in the United States and South Africa (New York, 1995); Penny Marie Von Eschen, "African-Americans and Anti-Colonialism, 1937— 1957; The Rise and Fall of the Politics of the African Diaspora" (Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 1994). This content downloaded from 137.110.192.6 on Thu, 28 Sep 2017 23:04:58 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 616 : DIPLOMATIC HISTORY for Edith Sampson and the NAACP to collaborate with a that retarded African freedom but inappropriate for a D to collaborate with a Soviet government that was supporting ing apartheid and colonialism? Are African interests so trivial? Does being African and "American" involve a abnegation not required of others in this nation? If so, it is l a Louis Farrakhan can lead a march on Washington that d sion led by Martin Luther King, Jr., thirty odd years earlie Although these articles are concerned with the link be foreign policy during the Cold War, this epochal conflict wa time that African Americans sought to influence U.S. fo deed, the Cold War did not present the first time that A found themselves in conflict with U.S. foreign policy." Laville and Lucas particularly should consider that it m nature of being an oppressed nationality to adopt viewp considered to be beyond the mainstream. Should it be de for example, that Africans and Indians in South Africa d views of their Afrikaner counterparts on the late-ninetee with Great Britain or World War I?'2 What would be the reason for Africans in North America to support Washington's effort to seize Native American land and drive them all into poverty, so this land could be stocked further with African slaves? Indeed, what would be the reason for Native Americans or Africans to back the Yankees during the 1776 revolu tion when it was clear that the rebels were bent on further land seizures and enslavement? In fact, just as it can be questioned whether the Cold War "victory" was a triumph for Africans and African Americans, it is not far-fetched to suggest that the interests of darker peoples in North Anter ica may have been better served had London been able to defeat the rebels. If, as Edmund Morgan has reminded us, "American Freedom" is grounded in African slavery, then this conclusion is not at all far-fetched. It is mandated.'3 While conservatives flinched in the face of the revolutions of 1848 that 10. New York Times, 17 October 1995; Washington Post, 17 October 1995. 11. Gerald Home, "Race for the Planet: African-Americans and U.S. Foreign Policy Reconsidered," Diplomatic History 19 (Winter 1995): 159-65. 12. Albert Grundlingh, Fighting Their Own War: South African Blacks and the First World War (Johannesburg, 1987); Surendra Bhana and Bridglal Pachai, eds., A Documentary History of Indian South Africans (Stanford, 1984). 13. Edmund Morgan, American Slavery/American Freedom: The Ordeal of Colonial Virginia (New York, 1975); Colin G. Calloway, The American Revolution in Indian Country: Crisis and Diversity in Native American Communities (New York, 1995); Graham Hodges, ed., The Black Loyalist Directory: African-Americans in Exile after the American Revolution (New York, 1995); Robert M. Calhoon, Timothy M. Barnes, and George A. Rawlyk, eds., Loyalists and Commu nity in North America (Westport, 1994); Sylvia R. Frey, Water from the Rock: Black Resistance in a Revolutionary Age (Princeton, 1991). This content downloaded from 137.110.192.6 on Thu, 28 Sep 2017 23:04:58 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms Who Lost the Cold War? : 617 swept Europe, Africans in North America cheered; comparisons were drawn between freedom of slaves and freedom for serfs. Naturally, after being accorded formal citizenship after the Civil War, it became easier for African Americans to speak with a louder voice on diplo matic matters. This was particularly true after the founding of the NAACP in 1909 with Du Bois as its essential operative. In 1910 the association harshly condemned the czar's expulsion of the Jewish population of Kiev.1' At a two-day conference sponsored by the NAACP in Washington in May 1917, the assembled delegates drafted resolutions attributing the cause of World War I to racism and profit seeking.'6 Basically, they accepted the argument that Germany's aggression was sparked by its dearth of colonies in Africa. The point is that it was difficult-in any historical era-for an organiza tion that purported to speak on behalf of African Americans to take posi tions on the global scene that were not viewed by some as radical or left wing or beyond the mainstream. It has been difficult for African Americans to align internationally with those same elites that have been responsible domestically for their plight-in 1776, 1848, 1917, 1946, or, dare I say, 1996. What Anderson needs to consider is that when Walter White in 1948 maneuvered to dump Du Bois from the NAACP and retreated from press ing the plight of African Americans at the United Nations because of fear of being associated with the domestic and international left, his actions may have pleased the White House and brought temporary concessions but they contradicted the historic and long-term interests of his constituency, which before and since has found it necessary to adopt unpopular diplomatic stances. in discussing tne i\i/v/\Lr, neirner /vnaerson nor Lavine ana Lucas ade quately sketch how this organization's positions changed so dramatically after the Cold War was launched, when compared to its viewpoints before this conflict. During World War II, the NAACP leadership particularly adopted positions that were to be deemed radical or left wing during the Cold War. These authors should explain how and why this reversal took place and what it signifies. If they were to do so, they would notice that this reversal was not solely voluntary-which suggests further that endorsing 14. Philip S. Foner and George E. Walker, eds., Proceedings of the Black State Conventions, 1840-1865, 2 vols. (Philadelphia, 1979-80). 15. See generally Gerald Home, Black and Red: W. E. B. Du Bois and the Afro-American Response to the Cold War, 1944-1963 (Albany, 1986); Charles Kellogg, NAACP (Baltimore, 1967), 44, 250; and Arnold Shankman, "Brothers across the Sea: Afro-Americans on the Persecution of Russian Jews, Jewish Social Studies 37 (Spring 1975): 14. i 6. Home, Black and Red; James Ivy, "Traditional NAACP Interest in Africa (as reflected in the pages of Crisis)," in Africa as Seen by American Negro Scholars, ed. American Society of African Culture (New York, 1963); W. E. B. Du Bois, Color and Democracy: Colonies and Peace (Millwood, NY, 1975). This content downloaded from 137.110.192.6 on Thu, 28 Sep 2017 23:04:58 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 618 : DIPLOMATIC HISTORY the Cold War agenda contradicted the historic and contem of African Americans. Richard Dalfiume has commented that World War II "stimulated the race consciousness and the desire for change among Negroes. . . . The hypocrisy and paradox involved in fighting a world war for the four free doms and against aggression by an enemy preaching a master race ideology, while at the same time upholding racial segregation and white supremacy were too obvious."1' As in past wars, the United States needed African American labor in rvf il or tr» /-\ o fo n t fko K.ltu/I fna urUi fût- f Rq rfn/r/i f/-»f . o however, in this case, the foe-Nazi Germany-was the embodiment of racialism and reactionary politics. The combination of these elements along with an alliance with the once-reviled Moscow - at once put the domes tic right wing on the defensive, while elevating the left, which, as noted had been the major predominantly Euro-American force championing th rights of blacks.'8 Simultaneously, U.S. elites had to be concerned with th special problem of Japan, which had played no small role in the formation o the Nation of Islam and whose attempt to portray itself as champion of the "darker races" had resonated among African Americans from the time this island nation had defeated Russia in 1905.19 The confluence of these elements-the retreat of the right, the rise of the left, the necessity to defuse Tokyo's special appeal to the "darker races"reflected in the 1944 "Declaration of Negro Voters," whose rhetoric and thrust sounds as if it were a document of the left-led National Negro Co gress when, in fact, it was endorsed by the NAACP, along with other major black sororities and fraternities, professional organizations, etc. "We ar concerned that this war bring to an end imperialism and colonial exploit tion. We believe that political and economic democracy must displace th present system of exploitation in Africa, the West Indies, India and othe cuiuinai ai cab. ~ i nib appiuacu ib iciiccicu m uic b uwii inajui resolution of 1944, which too reflects the influence of the lef with progressive workers in all lands and from all groups we s of imperialism both as a matter of justice to the victims exploitation and in order to remove a cause for war. The special stake in the abolition of imperialism because the m 17. Richard Dalfiume, "The Forgotten Years of the Negro Revolution," Depression and War: Prelude to Revolution, 1930-1945, ed. Bernard Sternshe 298-316; Richard M. Dalfiume, Desegregation of the U.S. Armed Forces: Fight '939~'953 (Columbia, MO, 1969). 18. Ralph B. Levering, American Opinion and the Russian Alliance, 1939-1 1976). 19. Ernest Allen, Jr., "When Japan was 'Champion of the Darker Races': Satokata Takahashi and the Flowering of Black Messianic Nationalism," Black Scholar: Journal of Black Studies and Research 24:1 (1994): 23-46; Richard Storrv, Japan and the Decline of the West in Asia, 1894-1943 (New York, 1979). 20. Home, Black and Red, 21—22. This content downloaded from 137.110.192.6 on Thu, 28 Sep 2017 23:04:58 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms Who Lost the Cold War? : 619 various colored races constitute most though not all of the victims of impe rialist exploitation."21 It was not a Communist who castigated Winston Churchill "and his class who would perpetuate imperialism for the benefit of the few. " It was not a Communist who favored "alliance with a steadily powerful Russia [rather] than further [reliance] on an Anglo-Saxon capitalist world." It was Walter White of the NAACP.22 It is with this background firmly in mind that one should assess the NAACP's subsequent Cold War "alliance" with the "Anglo-Saxon capitalist world." It is sometimes said of Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat that he plays a weak hand strongly. The opposite can be said of the post-World War II African American leadership: They played a strong hand weakly. For it was clear that World War II already had begun to erode the rationale and sinews of formal Jim Crow. The leadership did not have to sign on to the Cold War agenda-which ultimately was harmful to their interests-in order to receive civil rights concessions that already were in the pipeline. Certainly, it was not their constituency that impelled the NAACP to endorse the Cold War agenda. It has long been known that anticommunism, the wars in Korea and Vietnam, and the like were much less popular among African Americans than others.23 When World War II discredited outright racialism as a rationale for subordinating African Americans, the Dixiecrats who held sway within the Democratic party quickly shifted ground and began scoring black activists as "Red." This slowed down the granting of civil rights concessions and gave racism a new lease of life; when the NAACP capitulated to the Red Scare, it hastened this process. Similarly, as World War II closed, white supremacists shifted from suggesting that colo nialism was a boon for "inferior" Africans to suggesting that "premature independence" for the colonized would leave them vulnerable to the Sovi ets. The result was the same: continued colonial exploitation. Although it has not been noted sufficiently, African Americans were a disproportionate victim of McCarthyism. Philip S. Foner has observed that "the black tobacco workers were the first to feel the sting of the CIO's red baiting drive" and that 65 percent of those in the International Longshore men and Warehousemen's Union who were "screened" from the waterfront for decidedly "pinkish tendencies" were African American. Ferdinand Smith, a Jamaican-American and Communist leader of the National Mari 21. Ibid., 22-23. 22. Ibid., 23. 23. Ibid., 2; Alfred O. Hero, American Religious Groups View Foreign Policy: Trends in Rank and File Opinion, igjj-igôp (Durham, 1973), 85, 90-91; idem, "American Negroes and U.S. Foreign Policy: 1937—1967," Journal of Conflict Resolution 8 (June 1969): 220—51; James L. Roark, "American Black Leaders: The Response to Colonialism and the Cold War, 1943— 1953," African Flistorical Studies 4 (1971): 253-70. The instant debate makes the point: The debate on blacks and the Cold War is not between the center and the right, as so often happens when the East-West conflict is mooted; it is a debate between the left and the center. This content downloaded from 137.110.192.6 on Thu, 28 Sep 2017 23:04:58 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms Ô20 : DIPLOMATIC HISTORY time Union, was one of the first victims of the Justice Departmen deport "aliens" who were Cold War opponents. This "Red Negro Protest" was designed not only to scare blacks away f traditional allies of the domestic and international left but also to protest would not veer from the narrow path of civil rights towar perilous terrain of redistribution of wealth and property. As I have noted recently, this weakening of black labor particul have had the "advantage" of helping to deflect African Americans international arena where their often stinging opposition to t caused so much consternation, but it also facilitated the rise o "anti-white" tendencies that were to explode in urban conflagratio 1960s and racial tensions that continue to exist in the 1990s inclusive and collective approach of black labor and the left falter easier for African Americans to listen to the once-tiny Nation of its mantra that one should "do for self, Laville and Lucas and Anderson-and other students of the intersection of race and the Cold War-should contemplate more carefully how, after World War II, the construction of "whiteness" merged with anticommu nism as a defense of the status quo, property and privilege; a more candid and racialist defense of white supremacy became more difficult with the discrediting of Hitlerism.26 Similarly, the links between racism and anticom munism globally await a detailed analysis. It may not be coincidental that Communist parties were ousted from power in Europe after 1989 but re tained power in Asia (China, Vietnam, North Korea, Laos) and Latin Amer ica (Cuba, a nation with a significant percentage of citizens of African descent). It may not be coincidental that, perhaps, the most popular Com munist party in the world today is in South Africa. This development is not a worrisome concern of the propertyless black majority; it is a worrisome concern for the privileged white minority. By signing on to the Cold War agenda, the NAACP leadership served to weaken a domestic and international left that had been their prime champion at a time when the Democrats were influenced strongly by 24- Philip S. Foner, Organized Labor and the Black Worker, 1619-1993 (New York, 1982), 282, 283, 286; Richard Freeland, The Truman Doctrine and the Origins of McCarthyism: Foreign Policy, Domestic Politics, and Internal Security, 1946-11)48 (New York, 1974); Jane Cassels Record, "The Red Tagging of Negro Protest," American Scholar 26 (Summer 1957): 325—33. 25. Gerald Home, Fire This Time: The Watts Uprising and the 1960s (Charlottesville, 1995). 26. David R. Roediger, The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class (New York, 1991); Eric Lott, Love and Theft: Blackface Minstrelsy and the American Working Class (New York, 1993); Wayne Addison Clark, "An Analysis of the Relationship between Anti-Communism and Segregationist Thought in the Deep South" (Ph.D. diss., University of North Carolina, 1976); David Jacob Group, "The Legal Repression of the American Commu nist Partv, 1946-1951" (Ph.D. diss., University of Massachusetts, 1979); Rubin F. Weston, Racism in U.S. Imperialism: The Influence of Racial Assumptions on American Foreign Policy, 1893 1946 (Columbia, SC, 1972); Michael H. Hunt, Ideology and U.S. Foreign Policy (New Haven, 1987). This content downloaded from 137.110.192.6 on Thu, 28 Sep 2017 23:04:58 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms W ho Lost the Cold War? : 621 Dixiecrats and Republicans were continuing their quest to become "lily white. "2? The domestic assault on the left helped to set the stage for the coming of a war in Vietnam-the ultimate expression of the Cold War agenda-that drained tax dollars that could better have been spent on pressing domestic needs.28 By casting leaders like Du Bois into purgatory because of failure to endorse the Cold War agenda, the NAACP leadership prompted the rise of a resurgent right wing that by the 1990s would cast into doubt basic civil rights guarantees.29 It is with this perspective firmly in mind that we can take a closer look at the NAACP and Edith Sampson. Sampson was not alone in her globetrotting on behalt of a btate Department desperately seeking a black voice to reassure skeptical audiences that Jim Crow America was not all that bad. The writer J. Saunders Redding traveled to India for this purpose. Carl Rowan ventured to India, Pakistan, and Southeast Asia "to try to convince Asians that they should keep faith in democracy."'0 All faced doubting audiences who were quite familiar with the landmark petition to the United Nations of the left-led Civil Rights Congress-noted in passing by Anderson-which presented a devastating account of the "genocide" that was being visited upon African Americans.'1 When Sampson traveled to India, she faced a barrage of embarrassing questions about the dire plight of African Americans. Said one, "We will believe in America's altruistic motives after we see the American govern ment raise the living standard of the Negroes and extend to them full justice and equality." On one occasion, she was asked why she omitted the names of Du Bois and Robeson when she was listing noted African Americans. 27. Donald J. Lisio, Hoover, Blacks, and Lily-Whites: A Study of Southern Strategies (Chapel Hill, 1985); Allen J. Lichtman, Prejudice and the Old Politics: The Presidential Election of 1928 (Chapel Hill, 1979); Ralph J. Bunche, The Political Status of the Negro in the Age of FDR (Chicago, 1973); Thomas and Mary D. Edsall, Chain Reaction: The Impact of Race, Rights, and Taxes on American Politics (New York, 1991 ); Donald R. McCoy and Richard T. Ruetten, Quest and Response: Minority Rights and the Truman Administration (Lawrence, 1973); William C. Berman, The Politics of Civil Rights in the Truman Administration (Columbus, OH, 1970). 28. Seymour Melman, Pentagon Capitalism: The Political Economy of War (New York, 1970); Roger W. Lotchin, Fortress California, 1910-1961: From Warfare to Welfare (New York, 1992); Seymour Melman, The Defense Economy : Conversion of Industries and Occupations to Civilian Needs (New York, 1970). 29. Gerald Home, Reversing Discrimination: The Case for Affirmative Action (New York, 1992); Douglas S. Massey and Nancy A. Denton, American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the Underclass (Cambridge, MA, 1993); Nijole V. Benokraitis, Affirmative Action and Equal Opportunity: Action, Inaction, Reaction (Boulder, 1978); Mel Laiman, The Political Economy of Racism: A History (Boulder, 1993). See also Herbert Haines, Black Radicals and the Civil Rights Mainstream, 1994-1990 (Knoxville, 1988). As demonstrated here, when the left was weakened, civil rights concessions slowed down; thus, the actions of the NAACP leadership ultimately were self-defeating. 30. Home, Black and Red, 280; J. Saunders Redding, An American in India: A Personal Report on the India Dilemma and the Nature of Her Conflicts (Indianapolis, 1954); Carl Thomas Rowan, The Pitiful and the Proud (New York, 1956). 31. Gerald Home, Communist Front? The Civil Rights Congress, 1946-1996 (Rutherford, NJ, 1988). This content downloaded from 137.110.192.6 on Thu, 28 Sep 2017 23:04:58 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 622 : DIPLOMATIC HISTORY Despite her exalted post, Sampson was not the most diplo tors. At one point she was quoted as saying that freeing before they are prepared . . . might result in their su colonialism of the Soviet Union.' " This standard rationale for anticommu nism might have warmed the cockles of her State Department sponsors, but it won her little credibility among Indians-a "subject people" for a good deal of the twentieth century. She was heckled in Vienna when she "denied that the color bar is typical in the U.S."32 The point is that for generations, blacks, like Frederick Douglass, had traveled abroad in order to rallv support against racism and barbarism at home.33 The Cold War junkets of Sampson, Redding, Rowan, et al. repre sented a relatively new development: blacks traveling abroad-on behalf of the U.S. government - to cover up racism and barbarism at home. Although Laville and Lucas cite an early statement from Martin Luther King, Jr., that seems to reflect anticommunism, they neglect to mention that the Nobel laureate's reluctance to dump alleged Communists like Jack O'Dell and Stanley Levison helps to account for the unremitting hostility he experienced at the hands of the FBI.3+ O'Dell got it right when he proclaimed - after King had moved to dismiss him because of FBI pressure " 'I am not the issue!' " The real issue, as he told the writer Taylor Branch, was "control of the movement. "35 This point was lost on Walter White years earlier—and on Laville and Lucas today. Laville and Lucas claim that "Sampson had become an essential part of the counterattack against Soviet criticism of racial discrimination." How ever, as Michael Krenn notes sagely, when U.S. elites were plotting a "coun terattack against Soviet criticism" at an important juncture, "nothing in the papers of groups such as the NAACP or individuals such as Ralph Bunche indicates they were ever consulted during this matter. Even after the contro versy over the U95° World s rairj exhibit broke out, nothing was done to contact black leaders." Like most African Americans who have collaborated with U.S. elites on diplomatic affairs, Sampson was kept distant from 32. Home, Black and Red, 280-81. Paul Robeson's paper, Freedom, expressed the senti ments of many of his compatriots when it editorialized that African American "leadership must decide whether its mission in life is to 'foil the Russians' or to free the Negroes." Freedom, July ■951 - 33. R. J. M. Blackett, Building an Antislavery Wall: Black Americans in the Atlantic Abolitionist Movement (Baton Rouge, 1983); Waldo E. Martin, Jr., The Mind of Frederick Douglass (Chapel Hill, 1984); Philip S. Foner, ed., The Life and Writings of Frederick Douglass, 4 vols. (New York, '950-55) 34. Stephen B. Oates, Let the Trumpet Sound: The Life of Martin Luther King, Jr. (New York, 1982); David Garrow, Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, 1933-1968 (New York, 1986). 35. Taylor Branch, Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, 1934-1963 (New York, 1988), 845; Kenneth O' Reillv and David Gallen, ed., Black Americans: The FBI Files (New York, 1994), 28. This content downloaded from 137.110.192.6 on Thu, 28 Sep 2017 23:04:58 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms Who Lost the Cold War? : 623 important matters like policymaking; she was a hired gun (is the term "stooge" too harsh?) useful for a specific question-that inevitably involved race-but not deemed essential when the heavy lifting was to be done. Sampson campaigned for prisoners of war from Nazi Germany captured by the Soviets, sang the praises of "American democracy" (though most African Americans in the Deep South still could not vote), denied that Jim Crow existed on "street cars in . . . Chicago" (while disingenuously omit ting Montgomery, perhaps because she "had not visited" the Deep South in the 1950s), and worse. She had "little contact" with the civil rights move ment, though it could have used her legal skills to rescue activists from Deep South dungeons. Yet, for all that, she was still dumped by U.S. elites when she had outlived her usefulness. Laville and Lucas tell us much about Truman's words in favor of civil rights but much less about his deeds. They ignore the fact that the war in Korea where black soldiers complained mishtilv about racial discrimination derailed whatever civil rights plans Truman may have developed in 1948 in order to ensure that Henry Wallace would not garner the black vote. "Aboli tion of poll taxes" did not occur until the King-led movement, which facili tated passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965; "desegregation of interstate transportation" did not occur until the "Freedom Rides" of the 1960s; "dis crimination in the federal government and the armed forces" continues to exist. Laville and Lucas deny Du Bois's allegation that the NAACP was "tied in 'with the reactionary, war-mongering colonial imperialism of the present administration' " but say nothing about how its denial corresponds with the NAACP leadership's backing of war in Korea and NAACP inactivity about Truman's support for the apartheid regime in South Africa —whose soldiers fought on the same side as the United States during this war. There is much said about paper resolutions of the NAACP board; much less about what they actually did in the way of petitions, marches, conferences, or demonstra tions in support of, say, Mandela's African National Congress. But, of course, since the ANC was in alliance with South African Communists, it would have been unwise for the NAACP to be vocal in support-if it wished to retain the goodwill of U.S. elites. Laville and Lucas hail NAACP support for the Marshall Plan but say nothing about how aid to colonial powers like fascist Portugal helped this NATO ally repress further Angolans and Mozambicans; nor do they dis cuss how aid to France facilitated Paris's wars of aggression against Algeria and Madagascar, not to mention Indochina. Laville and Lucas should ask why the NAACP leadership did not press for Marshall Plan aid to the victims of colonialism, as opposed to the perpetrators. Was not their mission designed It was to a U.S. Kenneth to propel the "advancement of colored people"? bad enough for the NAACP leadership to provide aid and succor foreign policy that supported apartheid; but worse perhaps, as O'Reilly has pointed out, was this leadership's abject and direct This content downloaded from 137.110.192.6 on Thu, 28 Sep 2017 23:04:58 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 624 DIPLOMATIC HISTORY collaboration with the r B1 in order to isola to go along with their policy. '6 I am afraid that Anderson as well stumbles on this FBI issue. She relies heavily on their agents' accounts to describe the motives and doings of the National Negro Congress, which is akin to citing Birmingham police chief "Bull" Connor as the chief witness for the motives and doings of King's movement. Perhaps this is why in one sentence she has the Communists ditching the NNC in favor of "infiltrating" the NAACP (query: When Republicans, Democrats, and Catholics "join" the NAACP, should they be described as "infiltrating" too?) and in the very next sentence she describes the reality, which is that the NNC was folded into the Civil Rights Con gress, which continued its work. These are not trivial matters. Although Anderson suggests skepticism, or at least no backing, of the anti-Communist claims that undergirded the Truman administration's intervention in Greece, like most U.S. historians, jiiv. ij iiiucii 11iui v. avv^vpinig auwui uv>iiiv-jiiv. ami v>uiiiiiiuiii.ii v-iauiu, pi vjuiii" ably because of U.S. Communists' alleged "slavish" devotion to But why? Vietnamese Communists received more support fro Communists-and for a while, Chinese Communists-than U.S. Commu nists did; with such reasoning this should have been sufficient reason to back the U.S. war in Vietnam. And, of course, such reasoning did lead to support for this disastrous conflict. Opponents of progress from Vietnam to South Africa charged local Communists with "slavish" devotion to Moscow; Fidel Castro had a point when he reputedly complained after the collapse of the Soviet Union that first Washington disliked him because he was suppos edly a Moscow puppet, now they hate him because he is not. Walter White retreated from the international arena rather than face the same allegation of being accused of such "slavish" devotion. It is high time to challenge positions on their merit-or lack thereof-rather than resorting to the intellectually lazy charge of "slavish" devotion to Moscow, and this should be the case whether Vietnam, South Africa, Cuba, Greece, or the United States is involved. At least since the dissolution of the Communist International during World II, Belgrade's break with Moscow a few years later, and China's rupture with the Soviet Union a few years after that, the notion of an "international Communist conspiracy" that could justify a global war because of local Communists' "slavish" devotion has been a dangerous illusion. More recent studies have suggested that this illusion is no less misleading when applied to the United States.37 36. Kenneth O'Reilly, "Racial Matters": The FBI's Secret File on Black America, 1960-11)72 (New York, 1989); O'Reilly and Gallen, Black Americans, 21, 25; Home, Communist Front? 140, 246. 37. Robin D. G. Kelley, Hammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists during the Great Depression (Chapel Hill, 1990); Mark Naison, Communists in Harlem during the Depression (Urbana, 1983). Interestingly, those who have subscribed to overheated "conspiracy theory" when discussing This content downloaded from 137.110.192.6 on Thu, 28 Sep 2017 23:04:58 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms Who Lost the Cold War? : 62s In any event, using FBI documents to score points on the left is a perilous business, not only because these agents often had an incentive to distort and inflate in order to satisfy the anti-Communist impulses of J. Edgar Hoo ver. 38 Then as now, those truly concerned about the fate-and history-of African Americans should be more concerned about their leadership's "slavish"-here this adjective is all too appropriate-devotion to the predilec tions of U.S. elites. This brings us to a major point: These articles - particularly Michael Krenn's superb effort-suggest that we can learn more about the all important topic of race and foreign policy by examining the archives of U.S. elites, rather than the files of Edith Sampson, the NAACP leadership, and other centrists. As Krenn has observed, these centrists were on the periphery, and by 1948 were firmly within the Cold War camp-end of story, except for a few details, perhaps, about collaboration with the CIA abroad, sabotaging nf flip A \1 ( onrl afKpr onfi_pnlnniol mmrpmpnfc pfp Ac Krpnn hoc Hnnp wre* need an investigation of the archives of key government agencies; we close examination of the cable traffic between U.S. embassies and the State Department and the holdings of presidential libraries from Hoover to Rea gan. We need excavation in archives abroad, particularly in Moscow, so we can establish definitively whether Du Bois, Robeson, and other dissenters were being directed by those ultimate "outside agitators"-the ever-busy inhabitants of the Kremlin, efficiently fomenting subversion from South Africa to the South Bronx on behalf of blacks too unenlightened to be aware of their true interests. We need detailed examinations of race and foreign policy from the colo nial era to the present. For the post-World War 11 era, we need to know more about, for example, the Black Panthers' relationship to Cuba, China, and Algeria; Malcolm X's ties to independent Africa; Dr. King's relation ship with the peace and antiwar movements; the Nation of Islam's evolving relationship with Japan. When this examination is done, it needs to be placed in a larger context: For example, African American ties to London, Mexico City, and Moscow should be compared with, say, Ireland's centuries-old effort to build an alliance with France against their mutual antagonist in England. Likewise, those wondering why various ethnic and religious groups in Bosnia are reluctant to become a "minority"-a motive force for "ethnic cleansing" the links between Moscow and U.S. Communists have neglected fundamentally the question of black radicals and radicalism, which-along with labor-was the central domestic preoccupa tion of the Reds; similarly, they have hardly touched the post-World War II era. See Harvey Klehr, John Earl Haynes, and Fridrikh Igorevich Firsov, The Secret World of American Commu nism (New Haven, 1995). 38. David Garrow, "FBI Political Harassment and FBI Historiography: Analyzing Infor mation and Measuring the Effects," Public Historian 10 (Fall 1988): 5-18. See also Home, Communist Front? This content downloaded from 137.110.192.6 on Thu, 28 Sep 2017 23:04:58 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 626 : DIPLOMATIC HISTORY might understand why it they understood better the min in the United States, w The comedian Richard Pryor once joked that blacks should keep quiet about their association with the "Buffalo Soldiers," those U.S. army men who were so essential in routing and displacing Native Americans in the Far West. "You want them to hate us too?" he remarked.African Americans should claim no credit for a Cold War "triumph" that the twenty-first century will reveal was costly indeed. In retrospect, Du Bois was right. Sampson and the NAACP leadership were wrong in endorsing the Cold War agenda-if the principal criterion for judging is what has been in the best interests of Africans and African Americans. More to the point, we do not need to create what could well be called a "Richard Pryor School of History" that causes us to celebrate what should be mourned. Laville and Lucas and Anderson, to an extent, should digest this sober lesson. 39- David Rieff, Slaughterhouse: Bosnia and the Failure of the West (New York, 1995); Robert J. Donia and John V. A. Fine, Jr., Bosnia and Hercegovina: A Tradition Betrayed (New York, 1994). 40. John A. and Dennis A. Williams, If I Stop I'll Die: The Comedy and Tragedy of Richard Pryor (New York, 1991 ); Mel Watkins, On the Real Side: Laughing, Lying, and Signifying-The Underground Tradition of African-American Humor that Transformed American Culture from Slavery to Richard Pryor (New York, 1994). This content downloaded from 137.110.192.6 on Thu, 28 Sep 2017 23:04:58 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
Purchase answer to see full attachment
User generated content is uploaded by users for the purposes of learning and should be used following Studypool's honor code & terms of service.

Explanation & Answer

Your assignment is complete, if you have any questions, shoot me a message and hang tight I'll assist you in a few minutes or asap. AM HERE FOR YOU 😊Have a great day ahead.Just one more thing I have included scholarly references just for more support but if you need me to remove them please let me know.

Running Header: BLACK PEOPLE DURING THE COLD WAR

Black People During the Cold War
Institutional Affiliate
Date

1

BLACK PEOPLE DURING THE COLD WAR

2

Economic policies during the Cold War era helped in boosting the United States
Economy, they still did not affect African Americans by ...


Anonymous
Really helpful material, saved me a great deal of time.

Studypool
4.7
Trustpilot
4.5
Sitejabber
4.4

Similar Content

Related Tags