Nearly everyone can agree that the US has had horrifically bad race relations throughout American history. Yet, this nation constantly claimed to possess the moral high ground by being the defender of liberty. The Cold War intensified this notion of American exceptionalism and its love of freedom since the Cold War was not a war of military might, but rather of competing ideologies. However, with the discrimination of black people and the restriction of their rights, the race problem made America look bad. So, black people used this language of freedom to further their cause so that they would have a basis for the argument to include them into society with full democratic participation and liberty. The Cold War provided the incentive for American …show more content…
During the Cold War, the US projected an image of itself as the guardian of liberty to the world in order to appear morally superior to the Soviet Union, and this projection caused the language of liberty seep into every aspect of American society. By 1949, communism established itself as a major threat to the values of American society. In 1949, China converted to communism under the leadership of Mao Zedong, and in 1949, the Soviet Union tested its first atomic bomb. This Soviet development ensured that the two powers could not outwardly fight, lest there be mutually assured destruction in which both nations would be obliterated by nuclear weapons. So, the Cold War was a battle of ideologies. In 1950, the National Security Council wrote the NSC-68, which defined the Cold War as a fight between American freedom and “slavery under the grim oligarchy of the Kremlin”. Thus, American society believed that it protected liberty and democracy by engaging in the Cold War. The US added measures to rid society of communist influence, and thereby secure freedom. The House Un-American Activities Committee, the loyalty review system, and the hearings of McCarthy all attempted to …show more content…
American society and racism were inseparable for the early part of the 20th century, yet black people continued to fight for equal treatment in the US. In 1947, the NAACP filed a petition for the UN to examine human rights violations in the US due to racism; the UN did not do anything, but the action still showed that black people acknowledged that the US restricted their rights, and that they wanted a change. Black people were systematically stuck in a cycle of poverty. Housing segregation forced black people into urban ghettos, and employment discrimination and the lack of educational opportunities removed any hope for social mobility. In the 1950s, half of the black population remained in poverty. Alongside the restriction of economic freedom, segregation solidified a culture of social inequality by propelling the notion of black inferiority. In 1950, 17 states required segregation of public schools, and throughout the South, every aspect of the public realm contained“white” and “colored” sections (which the 1896 Plessy v Ferguson ruling legally justified). In the North, housing discrimination and school district lines also provided the conditions
One of the biggest fears of the American people is that the concept of communism contrasts drastically from the concept of capitalism, which the United States was essentially founded upon. The United States, as the public believed, was not a land of perfect communal equality, but rather a land of equal opportunity. However, what made communism so dangerous can be succinctly described by Eisenhower who compared the spread of communism as the domino effect. As his secretary of state, Dulles, put it, the propagation of communism “would constitute a threat to the sovereignty and independence” of America (Doc B). In addition, the Cold War also planted the seeds of rational fear of a global nuclear war. As Russia caught up to the United States in terms of technological advancements, they successfully developed the atomic bomb as well as the hydrogen bomb, which caused Americans to believe that the USSR would use these weapons of mass destruction to forcefully extend their ideologies to the USA. In fact, Americans were so frantic about a potential nuclear disaster that it...
During the cold war, the United States engaged in many aggressive policies both at home and abroad, in which to fight communism and the spread of communist ideas. Faced with a new challenge and new global responsibilities the U.S. needed to retain what it had fought so strongly for in World War II. It needed to contain the communist ideas pouring from the Soviet Union while preventing communist influence at home, without triggering World War III. With the policies of containment, McCarthyism, and brinkmanship, the United States hoped to effectively stop the spread of communism and their newest threat, the Soviet Union.
Civil liberties can be defined as the basic rights and freedoms of an individual granted to citizens in the United States and the entire world through the national common law or the statute law. The liberties include freedom of association, speech, movement, religious worship, and that from arbitrary arrest. The liberties get to form the roots of democracy in a society. In a dictatorial from of administration, the citizens are denied the rights and freedoms. However, liberties can be described as universal rights and freedoms. During the cold war in 1945 to 1953, the civil liberties got faced by many challenges as the citizens of the US faced and lived in a lot of terror.
“When the people fear the government, there is tyranny;when the government fears the people,there is liberty” -Thomas Jefferson. The reason why I chose this quote is that the Northern Korean and South Korean civilians were afraid of the government so there was tyranny. Tyranny is cruel and oppressive government or rule.
Since the Russian Revolution in 1905, the world housed suspicions regarding communism. These suspicions grew through both World War I, blossoming into a direct confrontation between Communist Russia and Capitalist America. Following the acts of World War II, the Cold War erupted. During the Cold War, United States foreign policy grew gradually aggressive, reflecting the public sentiment.
Blacks were left at the mercy of ex-slaveholders and former Confederates, as the United States government adopted a laissez-faire policy regarding the “Negro problem” in the South. The era of Jim Crow brought to the American Negro disfranchisement, social, educational, and occupational discrimination, mass mob violence, murder, and lynching. Under a sort of peonage, black people were deprived of their civil and human rights and reduced to a status of quasi-slavery or “second-class” citizenship. Strict legal segregation of public facilities in the southern states was strengthened in 1896 by the Supreme Court’s decision in the Plessy vs. Ferguson case. Racists, northern and southern, proclaimed that the Negro was subhuman, barbaric, immoral, and innately inferior, physically and intellectually, to whites—totally incapable of functioning as an equal in white civilization.
Segregation was a terribly unfair law that lasted about a hundred years in the United States. A group of High school students (who striked for better educational conditions) were a big factor in ending segregation in the United States. Even though going on strike for better conditions may have negative impacts, African Americans were not treated equally in education because of segregation and the Jim Crow laws were so unfair and the black schools were in terrible condition compared to the whites’.
Supreme Court decisions, segregation still pervaded American society by 1960. While protests and boycotts achieved moderate successes in desegregating aspects of education and transportation, other facilities such as restaurants, theaters, libraries, amusement parks and churches either barred or limited access to African Americans, or maintained separate, invariably inferior, facilities for black patrons.
The Cold War was a time of fear for the American people in the aftermath of the Second World War, but also was a key period in which different presidents began and led various programs to fight Communism, both at home and abroad. President Eisenhower was elected in 1952, and various actions he took throughout his two term administration both assuaged and increased American fears related to Cold War problems. Eisenhower’s policies and programs during the Cold War included MAD and McCarthyism, which caused domestic fears, Brinksmanship and the creation of highways to carry military equipment through the Federal Highway of 1956 in case of foreign war, and his creation of NASA and the National Defense Education Act of 1958 for a technology race with the Soviet Union. President Eisenhower implemented policies in order to keep Communism and Communist threats of war out of the United States, but these policies caused much fear in the American people concerning Soviet bombings and Communist spies. One such fear-inducing policy was McCarthyism, which was begun by the U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy, and those involved in blaming innocent people for Communist activity in America, and President Eisenhower did not stop this incrimination of guiltless U.S. citizens.
The relationships of the United States and the Soviet Union were driven by a complex interplay of ideological, political, and economic factors, which led to shifts between cautious cooperation and often bitter superpower rivalry over the years. The distinct differences in the political systems of the two countries often prevented them from reaching a mutual understanding on key policy issues and even, as in the case of the Cuban missile crisis, brought them to the brink of war.
Toward the end of the Progressive Era American social inequality had stripped African Americans of their rights on a local and national level. In the 1896 Supreme Court case of Plessey vs. Ferguson, the Supreme Court sided with a Louisiana state law declaring segregation constitutional as long as facilities remain separate but equal. Segregation increased as legal discriminatory laws became enacted by each state but segregated facilities for whites were far superior to those provided for blacks; especially prevalent in the South were discriminatory laws known as Jim Crow laws which surged after the ruling. Such laws allowed for segregation in places such as restaurants, hospitals, parks, recreational areas, bathrooms, schools, transportation, housing, hotels, etc. Measures were taken to disenfranchise African Americans by using intimidation, violence, putting poll taxes, and literacy tests. This nearly eliminated the black vote and its political interests as 90% of the nine million blacks in America lived in the South and 1/3 were illiterate as shown in Ray Stannard Baker’s Following the Color Line (Bailey 667). For example, in Louisiana 130,334 black voters registered in 1896 but that number drastically decreased to a mere 1,342 in 1904—a 99 percent decline (Newman ). Other laws prevented black...
In the 1954 court ruling of Brown v. Board of Education, the Supreme Court ruled that segregation of schools was unconstitutional and violated the Fourteenth Amendment (Justia, n.d.). During the discussion, the separate but equal ruling in 1896 from Plessy v. Ferguson was found to cause black students to feel inferior because white schools were the superior of the two. Furthermore, the ruling states that black students missed out on opportunities that could be provided under a system of desegregation (Justia, n.d.). So the process of classification and how to balance schools according to race began to take place.
As Manley Pointer slammed the barn door shut behind him, the ladder to the loft collapsed to the floor. Hulga did all she could—scream. Minutes passed. Hours dragged on as Hulga continued crying for help. Deeming her efforts futile, Hulga wept. As the sun set beyond the horizon, Hulga’s eyes dried up. With no glasses and no rays of sun seeping in through the cracks in the roof, Hulga felt around blindly, gathering a small bundle of hay upon which to lay her head.
At the height of the Cold War, racial tensions in the United States were also reaching a breaking point. This era brought with it many of the seminal events in civil-rights history: the start of the Freedom Rides in 1961, the University of Mississippi’s admission of its first black student, and the Birmingham riots of 1963. While America struggled with the ever-present threat of nuclear war, this other kind of conflict threatened to undermine and demoralize America from within.
After the tragic events of World War II, the Cold War represented how the two superpowers were in a fight in order to gain more territory. The Soviet Union wanted European countries to abide by communism while the United States were trying to prevent the spread of communism and enforce democracy. However, the Soviets took control of the eastern half of Europe and the United States controlled the western side. Communism is a one-party dictatorship where the government controls economic and political decisions which is based on a five year plan. On the other hand, democracy is where the People elect the president and are protected under the rule of law. From 1947 to 1991, the cold war took in effect and led to decolonization, political and diplomatic confrontation, and armament race.