The Cold War and the Color Line: American Race Relations in the Global Arena

385 Pages·2001·1.52 MB·English

by  Thomas Borstelmann

THE COLD WAR AND THE COLOR LINE

THE
COLD WAR
AND THE
COLOR LINE
AmericanRaceRelationsintheGlobalArena
THOMAS BORSTELMANN
harvard university press
Cambridge, Massachusetts, and London, England 2001
Copyright © 2001 by Thomas Borstelmann
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Borstelmann, Thomas.
The Cold War and the color line : American race relations in the global arena /
Thomas Borstelmann.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index.
ISBN 0-674-00597-X
1. United States—Race relations—Political aspects. 2. United States—Foreign relations—
1945–1989. 3. United States—Foreign relations—1945–1989—Social aspects. 4. Cold War—
Social aspects—United States. 5. Southern States—Race relations—Political aspects.
6. African Americans—Civil rights—History—20th century. 7. Civil rights movements—
United States—History—20th century. 8. South Africa—Race relations—Political aspects.
9. Blacks—Civil rights—South Africa—History—20th century. 10. Civil rights movements—
South Africa—History—20th century. I. Title.
E185.61 .B728 2001
305.8(cid:2)00973—dc21 2001024861
For Lynn, John, and Daniel

CONTENTS
Preface ix
Prologue 1
1. Race and Foreign Relations before 1945 10
2. Jim Crow’s Coming Out 45
3. The Last Hurrah of the Old Color Line 85
4. Revolutions in the American South and Southern Africa 135
5. The Perilous Path to Equality 172
6. The End of the Cold War and White Supremacy 222
Epilogue 266
Notes 273
Archives and Manuscript Collections 357
Index 361

PPRREEFFAACCEE
PREFACE
In 1972, when i was fourteen years old, the ultraconservative Jesse
Helms was ªrst elected to the United States Senate from my home state of
North Carolina. That a ªgure so closely associated with racial segregation
couldbecomeoursenatorinthe1970sastonishedme,evenatthatyoungage.
By this time, however, Helms had mostly dropped the rhetoric of white su-
premacy and spoke primarily in the idiom of anti-Communism. With my
friends and especially my older brother Michael, I made much counter-
culturalfunofthesenator’sconcernabout“subversives,”bothredandblack.
Little did I know that the seeds of a lifelong fascination with race relations
and the Cold War were being sown.
Threeyearslater,asjuniorsatPhillipsExeterAcademyinNewHampshire,
my classmates and I were required to choose between two courses for
fulªlling the second semester of the year-long U.S. history sequence. One
coursefocusedonthedomesticsideofAmericanhistorysince1865,whilethe
other paid greater attention to U.S. foreign relations in the same period.
Therewas,itwasthought,simplytoomuchmaterialtocoverbothstoriesad-
equately between January and June. A similar division shadows the entire
ªeld of American history, as I later found out, from the training of graduate
studentstothejournalsthatreºecttheresearchofprofessionalhistorians.In
1975, I opted for the international track but was never happy—then or
since—withhavingtomakethatchoice.Thisbookintendstocontributetoa
growingmovementtoreunitetheinternalandexternalsidesoftheAmerican
past.
ThestorytoldhererangeswidelyacrossU.S.andinternationallandscapes
inputtingthehistoryofwhitesupremacyonthesamepagewiththehistory
oftheColdWar.ParticularattentionispaidtoAfricaandtoAfricanAmeri-