Cold War Civil Rights: Race and the Image of American Democracy

In 1958, an African handyman named Jimmy Wilson was sentenced to die in Alabama for stealing two dollars. Shocking as this sentence was, it was overturned only after intense international attention and interference of an embarrassed John Foster Dulles. Soon after United States' segregated military defeated a racist regime in World War II, American racism was a major concern of US allies, a chief Soviet propaganda theme, and an obstacle to American Cold War goals throughout Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Each lynching harmed foreign relations, and the Negro problem became a central issue in every administration from Truman to Johnson. In what may be best analysis of how international relations affected any…