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Keeping the Faith

African Americans Return to Congress, 1929–1970

Postwar Foreign Policy and African-American Civil Rights

On September 24, 1957, President Dwight D. Eisenhower addressed the nation concerning the integration of Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. The President dispatched the 101st Army Airborne Division and U.S. Marshals to protect the students and to maintain order in Little Rock.On September 24, 1957, President Dwight D. Eisenhower addressed the nation concerning the integration of Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. The President dispatched the 101st Army Airborne Division and U.S. Marshals to protect the students and to maintain order in Little Rock.Image courtesy of National Park Service, provided by Dwight David Eisenhower Presidential Library

The Cold War, the great power rivalry that evolved between the United States and the Soviet Union in the aftermath of World War II, riveted international attention on U.S. segregation practices.61 Discrimination against millions of African Americans at home prompted criticism from allies and provided Kremlin propagandists with ample public relations opportunities. Members of the U.S. policymaking elite, who tended to cast the Soviet–American rivalry in terms of good versus evil, were keenly aware of the gap between their rhetoric about defending the “Free World” from communist “aggression” and democratic shortcomings at home, such as the Little Rock crisis of September 1957, when the Dwight D. Eisenhower administration was compelled to dispatch federal troops and marshals to integrate the city’s Central High School. Surveying the episode, widely respected foreign policy commentator Walter Lippmann noted, “the work of the American propagandist is not at present a happy one.” Segregation “mocks us and haunts us whenever we become eloquent and indignant in the United Nations…The caste system in this country, particularly when as in Little Rock it is maintained by troops, is an enormous, indeed an almost insuperable, obstacle to our leadership in the cause of freedom and human equality.”62

The historic 1954 Supreme Court case, <em>Brown v. the Board of Education of Topeka (KS)</em>, desegregated the nation&rsquo;s public schools. In September 1957, nine African-American students enrolled at the whites-only Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. Students were escorted to school by 101st Airborne Division soldiers. More than 40 years later, Congress recognized the bravery of the &ldquo;Little Rock Nine&rdquo; by awarding them the Congressional Gold Medal.The historic 1954 Supreme Court case, Brown v. the Board of Education of Topeka (KS), desegregated the nation’s public schools. In September 1957, nine African-American students enrolled at the whites-only Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. Students were escorted to school by 101st Airborne Division soldiers. More than 40 years later, Congress recognized the bravery of the “Little Rock Nine” by awarding them the Congressional Gold Medal.Image courtesy of Library of Congress

U.S. officials viewed domestic civil rights through an ideological lens shaped by the Cold War that at times produced contrarian impulses.63 In some measure, American officials’ increasing receptiveness to calls for civil rights at home in the 1950s and 1960s must be examined within the context of their desire to promote a positive image of America abroad, particularly in the contest for support in developing, decolonized countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America—principal proxy arenas for the Cold War.64 As historian Thomas Borstelmann observes, U.S. officials often sought “to try to manage and control the efforts of racial reformers at home and abroad…They hoped effectively to contain racial polarization and build the largest possible multiracial, anti-Communist coalition under American leadership.”65 Conversely, opponents of civil rights—often to great effect—labeled progressive reforms as communist-inspired. Moreover, investigatory panels such as the communist-hunting House Un-American Activities Committee (backed by arch segregationists such as Representative John E. Rankin) called prominent African Americans to testify during this era, questioning their ties to the American Communist Party and, by inference and innuendo, calling their patriotism into question.66

African Americans’ participation in the international dialogue about civil rights and postcolonial self-determination is noteworthy. NAACP Secretary Walter White remarked that World War II gave African Americans “a sense of kinship with other colored—and also oppressed—peoples of the world,” a belief “that the struggle of the Negro in the United States is part and parcel of the struggle against imperialism and exploitation in India, China, Burma, Africa, the Philippines, Malaya, the West Indies, and South America.”67 The Cold War certainly magnified these issues. As bellwethers of this international cognizance, Representatives Powell and Diggs made significant strides inserting themselves into the foreign policy debate, suggesting a growing black influence in shaping public perceptions about racism that transcended U.S. borders.68

In this 1966 photo, Education and Labor Committee Chairman <a href="/member-profiles/profile.html?intID=33">Adam Clayton Powell, Jr.</a>, (left) walked down a hallway of the Rayburn House Office Building accompanied by his administrative assistant, Chuck Stone.In this 1966 photo, Education and Labor Committee Chairman Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., (left) walked down a hallway of the Rayburn House Office Building accompanied by his administrative assistant, Chuck Stone.Image courtesy of Library of Congress

Powell emerged as a foreign policy innovator. Representing a polyglot district, the Harlem Representative catered to the many nationalist impulses of his constituency, pushing for more liberal immigration policies, which were important to the large West Indian immigrant community in his district. He often met with visiting African heads of state and, as a freshman Member of the House, introduced legislation that allowed for the naturalization of Filipinos and South Asian Indians.69 A critic of the containment policy adopted by the Eisenhower administration, and particularly of the emphasis of Secretary of State John Foster Dulles on the need for allies to conform to liberal democratic ideals, he was stingingly critical of racial discrimination in the U.S. foreign policy apparatus. Noting in 1953 that the U.S. was “the most hated nation in the world today,” Powell called for immediate civil rights reforms, warning that otherwise “communism must win the global cold war by default.”70

In April 1955, Powell attended the Bandung, Indonesia, Afro-Asian Conference, a gathering of developing nations which opposed the “neocolonialism” of the superpowers and included representatives from India, Pakistan, Indonesia, Egypt, Ceylon, and Burma. U.S. officials refused to send an official representative to the conference, so Powell went as a private citizen even though the government asked him not to attend. His mere presence, he later told President Eisenhower, was “living proof to the fact that there is no truth in the Communist charge that the Negro is oppressed in America.”71 Powell, however, also powerfully endorsed the notion that smaller nations could remain unaligned and neutral in the larger Cold War struggle and questioned Washington’s embrace of the containment strategy and its missionary zeal for promoting free market trade. His efforts prodded the administration to install several African Americans as United Nations delegates and alternates in 1956.72

Shortly after becoming the first Black American to serve in the U.S. Senate in nearly a century, <a href="/member-profiles/profile.html?intID=125">Edward Brooke</a> of Massachusetts met with President Lyndon B. Johnson in the Oval Office in January 1967.Shortly after becoming the first Black American to serve in the U.S. Senate in nearly a century, Edward Brooke of Massachusetts met with President Lyndon B. Johnson in the Oval Office in January 1967.Photograph by Yoichi R. Okamoto, courtesy of the LBJ Library

Diggs and Powell also became the first black Members of Congress to visit Africa. Diggs was part of an official U.S. delegation led by Vice President Richard M. Nixon in 1957 that participated in Ghana’s celebration of independence from British rule and the inauguration of Kwame Nkrumah as prime minister. Powell, who had a longtime connection with Nkrumah—an attendee of his Abyssinian Baptist Church in the 1930s as a merchant seaman and as a foreign student—joined Diggs in an unofficial capacity in Ghana’s capital, Accra.73 Diggs recalled that he and Powell “stood out there with tears coming down our cheeks” as the Union Jack (the British flag) was lowered and the new Ghanaian flag was raised in its place.74 Diggs later attended the All-African Peoples Conference in Accra, organized by Nkrumah, as a show of Third World solidarity. Diggs returned from that visit convinced that the United States was “in danger of losing the present advantage it holds in Africa to the Soviet Union.” He added, “our Nation needs to be educated on the tremendous significance of the development of Africa.”75 Believing he “could make a contribution” to improve relations between Washington and postcolonial African governments, Diggs requested and was awarded a spot on the Foreign Affairs Committee in January 1959.

American intervention in the Vietnamese civil war—between the communist regime in Hanoi and the U.S.-backed government in Saigon—was another key foreign policy issue for black Members of Congress. Representative Gus Hawkins opposed the war, based partly on impressions he formed while visiting South Vietnam in 1970 that the government routinely violated prisoners’ human rights. Others, such as Representative Robert Nix, supported the foreign policies of the two Democratic presidents—John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson—who broadened the U.S. military commitment and mission in Southeast Asia. As a Senate candidate in 1966, Edward Brooke was initially skeptical about the war. After an official visit to Vietnam, he asserted that the military policy of the Johnson administration was prudent because there was no prospect of meaningful negotiations with the North Vietnamese. Brooke tacked back toward a dissenting position when, in 1970, he opposed the Nixon administration’s policy of attacking communist sanctuaries in Cambodia. He eventually voted for the Cooper–Church Amendment of 1970, which prohibited the deployment of U.S. forces outside Vietnam.

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Footnotes

  1. For a recent and important study of the topic, see Thomas Borstelmann, The Cold War and the Color Line: American Race Relations in the Global Arena (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001).
  2. Walter Lippmann, “Today and Tomorrow: The Grace of Humility,” 24 September 1957, Washington Post: A15.
  3. President Kennedy worried about Soviet propaganda arising from a horrific, May 1963 Associated Press picture of Birmingham, Alabama, officials unleashing police dogs on young civil rights protestors. “What a disaster that picture is,” Kennedy moaned. “That picture is not only in America but all around the world.” See Nick Bryant, The Bystander: John F. Kennedy and the Struggle for Black Equality (New York: Basic Books, 2006): 388, 472.
  4. See Mary L. Dudziak, Cold War Civil Rights: Race and the Image of American Democracy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002).
  5. Borstelmann, The Cold War and the Color Line: 2–8, quotation on page 2.
  6. The best single source on HUAC is Walter Goodman, The Committee: The Extraordinary Career of the House Committee on Un-American Activities (New York: Farrar, Strauss & Giroux, 1968). For the debate surrounding the establishment of a permanent HUAC and a synopsis, see Raymond Smock, ed., Landmark Documents on the U.S. Congress (Washington, DC: Congressional Quarterly Inc., 1999): 367–374; Congressional Record, House, 79th Cong., 1st sess. (3 January 1945): 10–15. Rankin resuscitated HUAC from the brink of elimination. Established as a select committee in 1938, the panel initially investigated domestic fascist groups. Under the control of Chairman Martin Dies, Jr., of Texas, however, it rapidly became a soapbox from which New Deal programs were denounced and real and imagined communist subversives were routed out. Many Representatives resented the committee’s costs and its tendency to conduct witch hunts. Most believed it would lapse after Dies’s retirement in early 1945. But Rankin, a committee member and a devout segregationist and anti-communist, outmaneuvered House leaders and introduced a resolution to confer HUAC full, standing status at the opening of the 79th Congress (1945–1947). Faced with a roll call vote, many Members were reluctant to oppose a measure voters might perceive as strengthening America against the communist threat. Rankin’s amendment carried 208 to 186, with 40 Members not voting. At the height of the Cold War rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union, HUAC’s influence soared and contributed to a climate of domestic fear stoked by its sensational and often unsubstantiated investigations.
  7. White, A Rising Wind: 144.
  8. See, for example, Penny M. Von Eschen, Race Against Empire: Black Americans and Anticolonialism, 1937–1957 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1997); Brenda Gayle Plummer, Rising Wind: Black Americans and U.S. Foreign Affairs, 1935–1960 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996).
  9. Plummer, Rising Wind: 249.
  10. Ibid.
  11. Borstelmann, The Cold War and the Color Line: 96.
  12. Plummer, Rising Wind: 248–253; quotation on page 251.
  13. Ibid., 292.
  14. Carolyn P. DuBose, The Untold Story of Charles Diggs: The Public Figure, the Private Man (Arlington, VA: Barton Publishing House, Inc., 1998): 62–65.
  15. “Diggs Urges Better U.S. Attitude Toward Africa,” 23 December 1958, Chicago Defender: 7.