44 pages • 1 hour read
Mary L. DudziakCold War Civil Rights: Race and the Image of American Democracy
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2000A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
ConclusionChapter Summaries & Analyses
Conclusion Summary
For Dudziak, the salient factor linking racism, the United States, and the Cold War is how the US federal government tried to “control the story” (250). The federal government sought to handle the narrative both by silencing radical critics of the United States and by promoting the idea that US democracy led to gradual improvement in race relations. At the height of the Cold War, the US civil rights movement also benefited from international links with anti-colonialist struggles abroad. After the passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965, the Vietnam War and the conservative reaction to race-motivated riots in US cities ended the international focus on civil rights. Furthermore, with the legislative victories of the civil rights movement, civil rights stopped being a focus “[o]nce America’s image seemed secure” (252).
Dudziak argues that events in the United States should not be seen in isolation. The civil rights struggle in the United States was also influenced by international movements. Meanwhile, even since the end of the Cold War, international criticism of racism in the United States has continued: “What has changed is the perception of whether it has strategic importance” (254, emphasis added). Still, Dudziak reminds readers that racial justice in the United States will continue to “have an impact on the nation’s moral standing in a diverse and divided world” (254).
Conclusion Analysis
In her Conclusion, Dudziak summarizes her argument that The Growth of Civil Rights Activism and The Role of the Cold War in Rights Discourse were intertwined. The Cold War did give the US federal government and various politicians reasons to intervene decisively in favor of civil rights. Likewise, US civil rights activists reaching out to the United Nations and international opinion gave them an option for leverage. Still, though, these connections also limited the scope of civil rights activism. This remained true even after the US federal government less aggressively acted against activists they deemed too radical: “Although the Cold War helped motivate civil rights reform, it limited the field of vision to formal equality, to opening the doors of opportunity, and away from a broader critique of the American economic and political system” (252, emphasis added).
However, Dudziak explains here that her argument is not just relevant to the history of the Cold War and the civil rights movement. Her study is addressed to other historians as well, in regard to The Global Influence on American Civil Rights. She argues historians of the modern United States need to look more at the ways the United States and the world affect each other. Dudziak asserts, “We see that the borders of history are permeable, that American soil cannot contain the story of American history” (252). She thus encourages US historians to do more to view the story of American history in the context of the wider world, whatever the era or topic.
