Gelo Essay – Critical Thinking
Learning objectives:
Develop historical thinking skills.
Interpret sources.
Strengthen organization and communication skills.
Assignment:
Write a 2-page, double spaced essay that is based on the two primary sources included below – the Justice Department’s amicus curiae brief and John F. Kennedy’s report.
Steps:
Complete the Race and Cold War lesson to learn about the historical context of race and the Cold War. Note that the images of Soviet propaganda or images like them were referenced in the amicus curiae brief.
Read and analyze the primary source excerpts below. How do the two sources show that influence of the Cold War on the U.S. executive branch during the Cold War? In other words, how does each author see the relationship between racial equality within the United States and US Cold War rhetoric on the world stage.
Note that the sources were written just over 11 years apart – in 1952 and 1963.
Be sure to include a thesis statement at the end of the first paragraph, and then support the thesis with explanation and evidence in supporting paragraphs. The essay must be based on the primary sources.
Intro – Provide an intro to the sources (historical context of…). Thesis statement should appear at the end of the introductory paragraph.
Supporting paragraphs: One paragraph = one point
Include specific quotes from each primary source, and then explain how it helps answer the question.
Be specific rather than vague. Who did or said what, when, where, how, why?
Submit typed essay, saved in Word or as a PDF through appropriate dropbox by the due date. (Essays submitted in the Comments section or saved as an online document such as Google docs or Pages will not be graded.)
Race and the Cold War
African-Americans strove for racial equality long before the 1950s. Activists like Frederick Douglass
and Sojourner Truth spoke eloquently for the abolition of slavery and for the rights of black people.
By the end of the 19th century, Ida B. Wells exposed the horrors of lynchings in the South. In 1911,
before WWI, the NAACP officially formed as a civil rights organization to promote racial justice.
Activists like W.E.B. DuBois provided an intellectual and international perspective to the civil rights
struggle, while A. Phillip Randolph organized black workers to push for better job opportunities.
Notwithstanding these influential leaders, the major turning point in the quest for racial equality
within the United States would come after WWII, during the Cold War.
The 1950s began to witness major civil rights victories and the federal government began to
take an interest in supporting desegregation. Why was it that the Civil Rights Movement finally
made substantial progress in the 1950s and 1960s?
One reason for why the successes of the Civil Rights movement occurred when they did was the
rhetoric of the Cold War. The United States claimed to be on the side of freedom against Soviet
tyranny. Or, that the United States represented the free world (or democracy) against the enslaved
world (or Soviet Communism). The Soviet Union quickly pointed to the hypocrisy of United States
claims to freedom by pointing to racial inequality and violence against African Americans. The
United States government was concerned with how other countries would view it. In its competition
with the Soviets to win the hearts, minds, and resources of the world, it could not afford to have
American racism highlighted.
Civil Rights activists pointed out that U.S. claims during the Cold War did not always match the
reality at home. The U.S. Cold War rhetoric held the U.S. up as the model of equality and justice on
the world stage, but anyone in America who honestly looked at discrimination against African
Americans (in the North, South, and West) knew that the American ideals of equality and justice had
not yet been realized. As historian James Meriwhether explains, “racial prejudice in the United States
contradicted the nation’s Cold War mission: How could Washington convince the peoples of the
world that the United States was a friend to people of color and newly emerging nations in Asia and
Africa when its own citizens faced discrimination and segregation on the basis of race?…African
Americans understood and highlighted this contradiction early in the Cold War. As U.S. race relations
became more of a worldwide issue, a growing number of people in Washington also confronted the
contradiction.”
A major step toward racial equality occurred when the Supreme Court, in the 1954 Brown v. Board
of Education case, declared that separate was inherently not equal. The ruling overturned the 1896
Plessey v. Ferguson case. The years since Plessy had showed that separate was not equal. But that
was not the only thing that changed from 1896 to 1954. By 1954, the United States was in the midst
of the Cold War. U.S. Foreign Policy makers feared that Soviet propaganda that highlighted the
lynchings in the Southern U.S. would hurt U.S. interests on the world stage, especially in Africa. As
African nations gained independence (most did so between 1957 and 1970 with the major exception
of South Africa), the U.S. feared that the new nations would side with the Soviet Union in the Cold
War. This mattered because each side wanted more allies, but it also mattered in Africa specifically
because of natural resources. The Congo, for example, had uranium, which was needed to produce
more nuclear bombs. Each side – the Soviets and the U.S. – wanted access to such resources.
Even before the late 1950s, with the appearance of newly independent African nations, however, U.S.
policymakers started to see Jim Crow policies as problematic to Cold War goals. The U.S. was
supposed to stand for freedom and equality. Its soft power relied on this. The U.S.’s “soft power”
means that its culture, ideas, and values have attracted people to a pro-American view rather than the
U.S. having to rely solely on coercion. (Soft power is far less costly with regard to finances and
human lives.) The U.S. claim, during the Cold War, that it was the land of freedom and equality was
easy for the Soviets to counter. The Soviets pointed to racism in the US, particularly to segregation
and white mobs lynching African Americans. The photomontage images below, by Aleksandr
Zhitomirsky, provides two examples of Soviet propaganda that sought to highlight racial inequality in
the United States.
The U.S. foreign policy goals – connected to it being seen as a beacon of freedom and equality –
prompted U.S. Justice Department lawyers to write a brief in support of the plaintiffs in the 1954
case of Brown v. Board of Education.
The Cold War thus brought into stark relief the contradictions in American democracy. But the
contradictions were not easily remedied, and so they remained in the forefront of U.S. relations with
the world. Powerful forces wanted to maintain segregation, and they used the language of the Cold
War to support their cause. People who sought to change the status quo found themselves accused of
being Communists or Communist sympathizers. Segregationists sought to wrap the flag around these
efforts. Thus those in the U.S. government—itself not monolithic and containing a variety of
competing interests—who saw the connection between civil rights at home and America’s efforts to
win hearts and minds abroad faced a stern task in trying to convince a skeptical Africa of America’s
commitment to racial equality. Despite ongoing conflict over civil rights, throughout the 1950s the
U.S. government typically sought to portray race relations as ever improving and as part of an
evolving American success story.
Read the Justice Department’s amicus brief submitted for the Brown v. Board case. (It is dated 1952).
As you read, consider the influence of the Cold War on what the Justice Department wrote. What is
the main argument in the brief? What evidence, from the brief, shows that the Justice Department
lawyers were thinking about the Cold War?
Click here to access the brief.
Another reason – Role of Activists & TV:
The Brown v. Board decision in 1954 was an important case in that it started to unravel the legal
protection for racial segregation and discrimination. Nonetheless, the situation on the ground did not
dramatically change. It would take years before schools were desegregated. The South, where racial
discrimination was more deeply entrenched and more violent, resisted desegregation through
“massive resistance.”
The situation in Southern communities, although accepted on a local level through agreement and
through terror, seemed outrageous to those outside of the South, and thus the advent of television,
which broadcasted footage of white violence against black people contributed to the success of the
Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s, and its successes, occurred when it did because of
the advent of television. The beating and murder of Emmett Till, and of other innocent people by
white supremacists contributed to a shift in sentiment in America as a number of Americans came to
sympathize with the situation of African Americans.
Watch the 5:37 minute video on Remembering Emmett Till (PBS Newshour). Note that what
happened to Emmett Till was not a rare incident. More unusual is that word (and images) of his
violent death spread. We know about it and remember it is because Till’s family lived in the North
where his mother could spread news of her son’s violent demise. Note that this clip avoids the more
gruesome images that people then would have seen. The video is available here: https://www.pbs.org/
video/new-book-revisits-murder-and-racial-injustice-of-emmett-till-1495849675/
Civil Rights activists used non-violent direct action, a method promoted by the Southern Christian
Leadership Conference (SCLC), which was founded by Martin Luther King, Jr. and Ella Baker,
among others. King explained what non-violent direct action was in his Letter from Birmingham Jail.
King had been imprisoned for leading a peaceful protest in Birmingham Alabama in 1963. In the
letter, addressed to white clergymen who had criticized the civil rights protests, King explained non-
violence direct action as activists breaking unjust laws in a peaceful manner in order to make
progress on civil rights. He wrote, “Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster
such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the
issue. It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored. My citing the creation of
tension as part of the work of the nonviolent resister may sound rather shocking. But I must confess
that I am not afraid of the word ‘tension.’ I have earnestly opposed violent tension, but there is a type
of constructive, nonviolent tension which is necessary for growth. ”
The Freedom Rides and the Lunch-Counter Sit-Ins are both examples of non-violent direct action.
Watch the following clips from the PBS documentary on the Freedom Riders. (Each clip is about 5
minutes.) It focuses on the Freedom Riders and the Southern Way of Life. Pay attention to who the
Freedom Riders were, what they were doing, and why. Then, what image does the documentary
present of the Southern way of life.
PBS Freedom
Riders – Non-
violent civil
disobedience:
Lunch Counter
Sit-Ins to
Freedom Rides
PBS Freedom
Riders clip –
Inspiration &
Violence
PBS Freedom
Riders clip –
Segregationists
PBS Freedom
Riders clip –
white Southern
way of life
PBS Freedom
Riders clip – non-
violent civil
disobedience
1964 Civil Rights Act and the shift in political parties.
The shift of African-Americans to the Democratic Party and white pro-segregation whites to the
Republican Party occurred overtime from the New Deal to the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980.
The Democratic party had included former Confederates and pro-segregationists (in other words
white Southern racists), who were known as Dixiecrats, one wing of the Democratic Party. The
Dixiecrats started to leave in mass during the 1960s. The election of 1964 is telling in that 5 Deep
South states voted Republican (for the first time) because they were reacting against the Civil Rights
Act of 1964 (signed and supported by the Democrat president Lyndon B. Johnson). On the other
hand, the Republican Party, which had been Lincoln’s Party, began to lose African-Americans in
mass after Barry Goldwater, the 1964 Republican candidate for president, had voted against the Civil
Rights Act.
The 1964 Civil Rights Act, and the Republican Party’s reaction to it, helped spur Jackie Robinson, the
noted baseball star who helped to shatter the color line in professional sports, to shift from the
Republican Party to support the Democrats in 1964. Robinson had been a Republican and had
maintained a friendly relationship with Nixon, whom he supported in the 1960 election. Nixon lost
the 1960 election to John F. Kennedy. Although Kennedy was hesitant to put his full support behind
the Civil Rights Movement, he did when pushed by the movement. When the Freedom Riders
challenged Southern Jim Crow laws on buses and stations that serviced the inter-state bus
transportation, JFK’s brother Bobby Kennedy, serving as Attorney General, reacted to the violence
riders encountered on their protest journey through the Deep South, especially in Alabama. Kennedy
sent in U.S. Marshalls to protect the Freedom Riders. After JFK’s assassination in 1963, Lyndon B.
Johnson (LBJ) became president. Johnson went further than Kennedy. Watch the CBS segment on
LBJ’s Legacy: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/re-viewing-the-legacy-of-lbj/
