Cold War civil rights: The relationship between civil rights and foreign affairs in the Truman administration

In the years following World War II, racial discrimination in the U.S. received increasing attention from other countries. Newspapers throughout the world carried stories regarding discrimination against non-white visiting foreign dignitaries, as well as African Americans. The Soviet Union took advantage of U.S. racial problems, using the race issue in its anti-American propaganda with increasing frequency in the postwar years. Because of its effect on international opinion, the Truman Administration believed that domestic race discrimination had a serious, negative effect on foreign relations. State Department officials came to realize that they could not encourage emerging Third World nations to adopt democratic forms of government if American democracy was associated with racial segregation and discrimination. Accordingly, they argued that civil rights reform at home was critical to the Cold War struggle against communism.; This study examines the international criticism of U.S. race discrimination during the early Cold War years, focusing on the ways government officials attempted to counter negative attention to U.S. racial problems, and the degree to which these concerns influenced Truman administration civil rights policies. It argues that an examination of the effect of domestic race discrimination on postwar foreign relations helps to situate postwar civil rights advances within the context of the Cold War, helping to explain why the Truman Administration took actions to further civil rights at the same time that it was supporting McCarthy-era restrictions on first amendment freedoms. The study concludes that Cold War foreign relations were an important factor motivating Truman Administration civil rights reform.