A Choice Outstanding Academic Title of the Year
How the fight for civil rights in America became an important front in the Cold War

In 1958, an African American handyman named Jimmy Wilson was sentenced to die in Alabama for stealing less than two dollars. Shocking as this sentence was, it was overturned only after intense international attention and the interference of Secretary of State John Foster Dulles. Soon after World War II, American racism became 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. Racial segregation undermined the American image, harming foreign relations in every administration from Truman to Johnson. Mary Dudziak shows how the Cold War helped to facilitate desegregation and other key social reforms at home as the United States sought to polish its image abroad, yet how a focus on appearances over substance limited the nature and extent of progress. Cold War Civil Rights situates the Cold War in civil rights history while giving an international perspective to the fight for racial justice in America.

"Groundbreaking." - American Lawyer

"This nuanced, scholarly appraisal of the relationship between foreign policy and the civil rights story offers a fresh and provocative perspective on twentieth-century American history." - Harvard Law Review

"Carefully reasoned, containing vivid accounts, and thoroughly documented with illustrations and 55 pages of explanatory notes, this work helps us rethink the familiar by analyzing the subject matter from a new perspective. It will have broad appeal to historians, other academicians and lay readers interested in American foreign policy and race relations." - Library Journal

"Dudziak earns high praise for her superb work." - Choice