Cold War, Civil Rights:

Decolonization and the

Global Human Rights
Movement
Ed Martini
Department of History, Western Michigan University
World History Workshop Presentation
18 May 2011
 I. Overview:
World History as an Interpretive Lens

• Teaching the Post-1945 Period, whether US or World,

should be more about considering multiple viewpoints
than “adding” content

• We can teach many of the same events (and meet many

parts of the new standards) without reinventing the
wheel

• Students should be able to put U.S. History into a

global context, to see the ways in which recent global
events have shaped the U.S. (and vice-versa)
Decolonization & the
Cold War
 What happens if we take
decolonization, rather than the
Cold War, as the defining
global event of the post-1945
world?
A Snapshot of Decolonization
• From the mid-19C to WWI more than 450 million
people were subjected to colonial rule

• Decolonization began after WWI, but was greatly

accelerated by WW2

• “Led” by the examples of India and Vietnam, 25 new

nations were created between 1957 and 1962 alone,
mostly in Africa
 The Role of the Cold War
• Anticolonial Social Movements radicalized by Cold
War dynamics, particularly when U.S. chose anti-
communism over anti-imperialism

• Many movements, drew on rhetoric, resources of

Cold War institutions, particularly Universities

• Made the world smaller, and helped leaders and

activists around world see commonalities
 The Cold War as a
War of Narratives
• Westad (The Global Cold War, 2005) argues that the
Cold War was, in part, a battle between United
States’ “empire of liberty” (US) and Soviets’ “empire
of justice”

• In this battle, both superpowers attempted to

convince new nations to join their camp; the leaders
of new nations had to choose which (if either one) to
cast their lot with
Challenging the Bipolar View

• By emphasizing the experience of

newly postcolonial states, the bipolar
superpower worldview is subject to
revision

• The non-aligned movement, as well as

the specific case studies of India,
Ghana, Vietnam, or Ethiopia, can serve
as examples of how the view from the
developing world challenges traditional
American and Cold War narratives
Tracing the Effects of Decolonization

• By the early 1960s, New Left leaders were hailing

the “Third World” as “the future” and as a model
for liberation movements in the West

• Vietnam and Cambodia in Southeast Asia; Algeria

in Africa; India in the Near East; and even Cuba in
the West served as inspiration for anticolonial
liberation movements
Some Critical Thinking Questions
• How did the colonial experience of nations in different
regions inform their liberation movements?

• How did decolonization effect the Cold War, and how did the
Cold War effect decolonization?

• To what degree was the Cold War simply a new form of

imperialism toward the developing world?

• What role did Communist ideology play in anticolonial

movements?

• Were the wars in Vietnam primarily anticolonial struggles or

battles in the Cold War? Cuba? Algeria?
 How to Get There?
• Group Work on Comparative Colonial
Revolutions (Vietnam/India/Algeria/Cuba)

• Comparing Maps From 1850, 1900, 1950 to

visualize the rise and fall of modern colonialism

• Rewrite a section on the Cold War from a U.S.

history textbook from a World History perspective
 Some Possibly
Familiar Primary Sources
• Ho Chi Minh’s Vietnamese Declaration of
Independence (1945)

• Richard Wright’s Report from the Bandung Non-

Aligned Conference (1955)

• UN Declaration on Granting of Independence to

Colonial Countries and Peoples (1960)

• SDS Port Huron Statement (1962)

Cold War, Civil Rights
 The Early Cold War
• 1947 - W.E.B. DuBois’ Appeal to the World used
Truman’s language of Free v. Slave world, calling on
the nations of the world to pressure the U.S. to end
segregation

• 1957 - Little Rock - Eisenhower’s speech to the

country couched in language of the Cold War and of
international human rights
 JFK and the Early 1960s
• 1960 - “Year of Africa” - 17 New Nations in Africa alone

• Sit-In Movement launches new phase of CRM

• Castro stays in Harlem to highlight U.S. racism

• Several African leaders to the U.S. are refused

Delaware, Maryland, en route from NYC to DC service in

• 1963 - Birmingham Actions are larger scale replay of Little

Rock - broadcast to entire world; Kennedy’s first call for
Civil Rights Act also couched in language of Cold War and
human rights
MLK’s Letter From a Birmingham
Jail
• Directed at unsupportive clergy, but used
a global context to make his case:

• “The nations of Asia and Africa are

moving with jet-like speed toward
gaining political independence, but
we stiff creep at horse-and-buggy
pace toward gaining a cup of coffee at
a lunch counter.”
Birmingham as World History
 Containment on Several Fronts
• Both Eisenhower and Kennedy sought to pursue multiple
forms of containment - limit the spread of Communism,
National Liberation Movements, and desegregation
movement
• Eastern establishment figures in both administrations new
about as much about the South as they did the Third World
(not much)
• Views of most administration figures was that neither
Africans nor “Negroes” were ready for democracy and
should only be brought along gradually
 The Later Civil Rights Movement:
Variations on the Theme

• Malcolm X - Cultivated Pan-African ties and compared

U.S. situation to that of South Africa, Angola
• Stokely Carmichael regularly linked the struggle of Black
people in the U.S. to that of those around the world
• The Black Panthers agenda based on the idea of “internal
colonization”
• Martin Luther King’s statements about the war in Vietnam
address which side of the “world revolution” of
decolonization the U.S. is on
Malcolm X’s Internationalism
 Martin Luther King
on Vietnam

• http://www.wmich.edu/teachmlk/visuals.ph
p
 Thinking Globally
• What happens when we view the Civil Rights
Movement as part of a global struggle for human
rights and against colonization?

• How did the narratives of decolonization and the Cold

War shape the Civil Rights movement, and vice-
versa?

• To what extent was the Civil Rights Movement part of

the global movement for human rights since 1945?