During the early years of the Cold War, racial segregation in the American South became an embarrassing liability to the international reputation of the United States. For America to present itself as a model of democracy in contrast to the Soviet Union's totalitarianism, Jim Crow needed to end. While the discourse of anticommunism added the leverage of national security to the moral claims of the civil rights movement, the proliferation of Red Scare rhetoric also imposed limits on the socioeconomic changes necessary for real equality. Describing the ways anticommunism impaired the struggle for civil rights, James Zeigler reconstructs how Red Scare rhetoric during the Cold War assisted the black freedom struggle's demands for equal rights but labeled “un-American” calls for reparations. To track the power of this volatile discourse, Zeigler investigates how radical black artists and intellectuals managed to answer anticommunism with critiques of Cold War culture. Stubbornly addressed to an American public schooled in Red Scare hyperbole, black radicalism insisted that antiracist politics require a leftist critique of capitalism. Zeigler examines publicity campaigns against Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s alleged Communist Party loyalties and the import of the Cold War in his oratory. He documents a Central Intelligence Agency-sponsored anthology of ex-Communist testimonials. He takes on the protest essays of Richard Wright and C. L. R. James, as well as Frank Marshall Davis's leftist journalism. The uncanny return of Red Scare invective in reaction to President Obama's election further substantiates anticommunism's lasting rhetorical power as Zeigler discusses conspiracy theories that claim Davis groomed President Obama to become a secret Communist. Long after playing a role in the demise of Jim Crow, the Cold War Red Scare still contributes to the persistence of racism in America.

At the height of the cold war, southern segregationists exploited the reigning mood of anxiety by linking the civil rights movement to an international Communist conspiracy. Jeff Woods tells a gripping story of fervent crusaders for racial equality swept into the maelstrom of the South's siege mentality, of crafty political opportunists who played upon white southerners' very real fear of Communists, and of a people who saw lurking enemies and detected red propaganda everywhere. In their strange double identity as both defiant Confederate flag-wavers fiercely protecting regional sovereignty and as American superpatriots, many southerners stood ready to defend against subversives be they red or black. Concentrating on the phenomenon at its most intense period, Woods makes vivid the fearful synergy that developed between racist forces and the anti-Communist cause, reveals the often illegal means used to wash the movement red, and documents the gross waste of public funds in pursuing an almost nonexistent threat. Though ultimately unsuccessful in convincing Americans outside of Dixie that the civil rights protests were controlled by Moscow, the southern red scare forced movement activists to distance themselves from the Marxist elements in their midst -- thereby gaining the sympathy of the American people while losing the support of some of their most passionate antiracist campaigners. A product of vast archival research and the latest literature on this increasingly popular subject, this is the first book to consider the southern red scare as a unique regional phenomenon rather than an offshoot of McCarthyism or massive resistance. Addressing the fundamental struggle of Americans to balance liberty and security in an atmosphere of racial prejudice and ideological conflict, it will be equally compelling for students of civil rights, southern history, the cold war, and American anti-Communism.

A radical explication of the ways anti-Black racial oppression has infused the US government's anti-communist repression. In the early twentieth century, two panics emerged in the United States. The Black Scare was rooted in white Americans' fear of Black Nationalism and dread at what social, economic, and political equality of Black people might entail. The Red Scare, sparked by communist uprisings abroad and subversion at home, established anticapitalism as a force capable of infiltrating and disrupting the American order. In Black Scare / Red Scare, Charisse Burden-Stelly meticulously outlines the conjoined nature of these state-sanctioned panics, revealing how they unfolded together as the United States pursued capitalist domination. Antiradical repression, she shows, is inseparable from anti-Black oppression, and vice versa. Beginning her account in 1917--the year of the Bolshevik Revolution, the East St. Louis Race Riot, and the Espionage Act--Burden-Stelly traces the long duration of these intertwined and mutually reinforcing phenomena. She theorizes two bases of the Black Scare / Red Scare: US Capitalist Racist Society, a racially hierarchical political economy built on exploitative labor relationships, and Wall Street Imperialism, the violent processes by which businesses and the US government structured domestic and foreign policies to consolidate capital and racial domination. In opposition, Radical Blackness embodied the government's fear of both Black insurrection and Red instigation. The state's actions and rhetoric therefore characterized Black anticapitalists as foreign, alien, and undesirable. This reactionary response led to an ideology that Burden-Stelly calls True Americanism, the belief that the best things about America were absolutely not Red and not Black, which were interchangeable threats. Black Scare / Red Scare illuminates the anticommunist nature of the US and its governance, but also shines a light on a misunderstood tradition of struggle for Black liberation. Burden-Stelly highlights the Black anticapitalist organizers working within and alongside the international communist movement and analyzes the ways the Black Scare/Red Scare reverberates through ongoing suppression of Black radical activism today. Drawing on a range of administrative, legal, and archival sources, Burden-Stelly incorporates emancipatory ideas from several disciplines to uncover novel insights into Black political minorities and their legacy.

"Black Liberation/Red Scare is a study of an African-American Communist leader, Ben Davis, Jr. (1904-64). Though it examines the numerous grassroots campaigns that he was involved in, it is first and foremost a study of the man and secondarily a study of the Communist party from the 1930s to the 1960s. By examining the public life of an important party leader, Gerald Horne uniquely approaches the story of how and why the party rose - and fell." "Ben Davis, Jr., was the son of a prominent Atlanta publisher and businessman who was also the top African-American leader of the Republican party until the onset of the Great Depression. Davis was trained for the black elite at Morehouse, Amherst, and Harvard Law School. After graduating from Harvard, he joined the Communist party, where he remained as one of its most visible leaders for thirty years. In 1943, after being endorsed by his predecessor, Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., he was elected to the New York City Council from Harlem and subsequently reelected by a larger margin in 1945. Davis received support from such community figures as NAACP leader Roy Wilkins, boxer Joe Louis, and musician Duke Ellington. While on the council Davis fought for rent control and progressive taxation and struggled against transit fare hikes and police brutality." "With the onset of the Red Scare and the Cold War, Davis - like the Communist party itself - was marginalized. The Cold War made it difficult for the U.S. to compete with Moscow for the hearts and minds of African-Americans while they were subjected to third-class citizenship at home. Yet in return for civil rights concessions, African-American organizations such as the NAACP were forced to distance themselves from figures such as Ben Davis. In 1949 he was ousted unceremoniously (and perhaps illegally) from the City Council. He was put on trial, jailed in 1951, and not released until 1956, when the civil rights movement was gathering momentum. His friendship with the King family, based upon family ties in Atlanta, was the ostensible cause for the FBI surveillance of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and COINTELPRO, the counterintelligence program of the FBI, which was aimed initially at the CP-USA, made sure to keep a close eye on Davis as well. But when the civil rights movement reached full strength in the 1960s Davis's controversial appearances at college campuses helped to set the stage for a new era of activism at universities." "Davis died in 1964. According to Horne, the time has now come when he, along with his good friend Paul Robeson and W. E. B. DuBois, should be regarded as a premier leader of African-Americans and the U.S. Left during the twentieth century."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

From National Book Award Finalist and Sibert Honor Author Albert Marrin, a timely examination of Red Scares in the United States, including the Rosenbergs, the Hollywood Ten and the McCarthy era. In twentieth century America, no power--and no threat--loomed larger than the communist superpower of the Soviet Union. America saw in the dreams of the Soviet Union the overthrow of the US government, and the end of democracy and freedom. Meanwhile, the Communist Party of the United States attempted to use deep economic and racial disparities in American culture to win over members and sympathizers. From the miscarriage of justice in the Scotsboro Boys case, to the tragedy of the Rosenbergs to the theatrics of the Hollywood Ten to the menace of the Joseph McCarthy and his war hearings, Albert Marrin examines a unique time in American history...and explores both how some Americans were lured by the ideals of communism without understanding its reality and how fear of communist infiltration at times caused us to undermine our most deeply held values. The questions he raises ask: What is worth fighting for? And what are you willing to sacrifice to keep it? Filled with black and white photographs throughout, this timely book from an award-author brings to life an important and dramatic era in American history with lessons that are deeply relevant today.

Radical Aesthetics and Modern Black Nationalism explores the long-overlooked links between black nationalist activism and the renaissance of artistic experimentation emerging from recent African American literature, visual art, and film. GerShun Avilez charts a new genealogy of contemporary African American artistic production that illuminates how questions of gender and sexuality guided artistic experimentation in the Black Arts Movement from the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s. As Avilez shows, the artistic production of the Black Arts era provides a set of critical methodologies and paradigms rooted in the disidentification with black nationalist discourses. Avilez's close readings study how this emerging subjectivity, termed aesthetic radicalism, critiqued nationalist rhetoric in the past. It also continues to offer novel means for expressing black intimacy and embodiment via experimental works of art and innovative artistic methods. A bold addition to an advancing field, Radical Aesthetics and Modern Black Nationalism rewrites recent black cultural production even as it uncovers unexpected ways of locating black radicalism.

Argues that the Cold War helped speed and facilitate such key reforms as desegregation due to international pressure and the obstacle American racism created in attaining Cold War goals.