The world elsewhere: United States propaganda and the cultural politics of race and nation, 1945--1968

This dissertation focuses on racism, the civil rights movement, and American cultural propaganda in the postwar era. Turning first to work by W. E. B. Du Bois and C. L. R. James, I demonstrate that the problem of the color line was a significant public relations burden for the United States at a time when both the Soviet Union and nations of color (India, China) pointed repeatedly to the failings of the self-appointed leader of the free world. The United States government tried to manage or “spin” the global scandal of American racism by sponsoring performers who would preach the benefits of capitalist democracy overseas. These propaganda ventures were somewhat successful in generating positive images of race relations in the United States, yet they were also, ironically enough, productive of a new kind of black oppositionality. Reading closely performances by Louis Armstrong, James Baldwin, William Faulkner (and his black interlocutors), and the players of a touring production of Porgy and Bess, I argue that African American cultural producers and intellectuals recognized in the government's propaganda program an opportunity to stage their own counterpropaganda theater—a counterpropaganda theater that typically involved exposing the nation to even more international critique. By reminding other nations that the United States somehow could not find a way to enfranchise its black citizens, these intellectuals and cultural producers placed pressure on the government to work for social change. For example, I demonstrate that through the clever use of a well-publicized challenge to the state, Louis Armstrong may have played a role in Eisenhower's intervention during the Little Rock desegregation crisis. Such counterpropaganda performances also played an important role within the African American community at home. The enormous black newspaper and magazine coverage devoted to black counterpropaganda performances by Armstrong and Baldwin suggests that such media-savvy and internationally-oriented performers helped construct the alternative black public sphere that would sustain the black struggle during the 1950s and 1960s.