The major connection here is that the needs of the Cold War helped cause some Americans to support civil rights for African Americans. A really good example of this can be seen in this campaign ad from Richard Nixon in his presidential campaign of 1960.
There, Nixon tells us that civil rights are important for Cold War purposes. He says that we need to use the talents of all our citizens to compete against communism. He also says that when we fail to grant civil rights to some in our society it makes us look bad in the eyes of the world. What he means is that segregation and discrimination make us look bad to the people (non-white, of course) of Africa and Asia. We need to look good to them so they will support us against the Soviets.
In these ways, the needs of the Cold War helped to...
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bring about some amount of white support for civil rights.
What was the relationship between the Cold War and the US Civil Rights Movement?
One important aspect of this relationship that I would like to add is that numerous black people, including significant figures in the Civil Rights Movement, identified as Communists or were sympathetic to Communism. Such figures included the actor and singer Paul Robeson, who had been vocal about his Communist membership as early as the 1930s, and the writer Richard Wright.
Communists started traveling to the South in the 1930s to develop support among poor, disenfranchised black people. The canvassers saw the struggles for civil rights and human dignity, such as the rights not to be lynched or otherwise terrorized, as part of a larger struggle. Communists played a role, for example, in the trial of the Scottsboro boys and their eventual acquittals. However, Communists saw the boys' plight less as a matter of race or color and more as a class issue. In other words, black people had been reduced to a subordinate class on the basis of color, a problem which they believed could be corrected through Communism. The Communist Party's weak and blind spots in regard to race would become a point of contention for some black members. Ralph Ellison memorably parodied the Communist Party in his novel Invisible Man, in which he referred to them as The Brotherhood.
However, the presence of black people in the Communist Party presented a threat due to fears of any significant Communist presence in the United States. If black people became Communists in significant numbers, Communism could spread, and there could also be insurrection, or revolt. The sympathy that some significant black figures, particularly the boxer Muhammad Ali, expressed toward Vietnam during the war also raised concern. It was, therefore, best for the government to make some concessions to the black community in regard to civil rights, though no significant legislation was passed until 1964, with the Civil Rights Act.
Still, this correlation is not proof that the government acted on civil rights out of fears over the Cold War and the threat of Communism spreading in the black community. It is also uncertain that the nation acted specifically out of concerns over perceptions abroad. It is possible that a mixture of factors contributed—these among others.
The major relationship between the Cold War and the Civil Rights Movement was that the Cold War caused American leaders to support civil rights more than they might otherwise have done.
The Cold War was, of course, a struggle between the US and the Soviet Union. Both sides wanted to dominate the world and spread their ideology as widely as possible. What this meant was that the two sides had to compete to gain the favor of various countries around the world. Civil rights was one issue that affected, or could affect, the way the other countries viewed the US. The Soviet Union was able to criticize the US for talking about democracy and human rights while mistreating racial minorities at home. This made the US look bad to other countries. It was particularly problematic when the US and the Soviets were competing for the loyalty of non-white countries. The Soviets could point out to the people of those countries that American democracy did not include rights and respect for people like them. This was a strong argument against the US and American leaders naturally wanted to make it impossible for the Soviets to use it against them.
Because the US wanted to look better in the eyes of the international community, many American leaders supported the Civil Rights Movement more than they might have done if it had been purely a domestic issue.
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