The Cold War and the Color Line

American Race Relations in the Global Arena

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by Thomas Borstelmann

Harvard University Press

Due/Published September 2003, 384 pages, paper

ISBN 0674012380

New in paper (F03)

Racial discrimination after 1945 was a foreign as well as a domestic problem. World War II opened the door to both the U.S. civil rights movement and the struggle of Asians and Africans abroad for independence from colonial rule. America's closest allies against the Soviet Union, however, were colonial powers whose interests had to be balanced against those of the emerging independent Third World in a multiracial, anticommunist alliance. At the same time, U.S. racial reform was essential to preserve the domestic consensus needed to sustain the Cold War struggle.

Borstelmann examines how the Cold War intersected with the final destruction of global white supremacy. Here he pays close attention to the two Souths--Southern Africa and the American South--as the primary sites of white authority's last stand. He reveals America's efforts to contain the racial polarization that threatened to unravel the anticommunist western alliance. In so doing, he recasts the history of American race relations in its true international context, one that is meaningful and relevant for our own era of globalization.

Contents

Preface

Prologue

1. Race and Foreign Relations before 1945
2. Jim Crow's Coming Out
3. The Last Hurrah of the Old Color Line
4. Revolutions in the American South and Southern Africa
5. The Perilous Path to Equality
6. The End of the Cold War and White Supremacy

Epilogue

Notes
Archives and Manuscript Collections
Index