The Civil Rights Movement and the Presidency in the Hot Years of the Cold War: A Historical and Historiographical Assessment

Abstract

The two most important phenomena that the United States confronted in the quarter century after the end of World War II were the Cold War and the Civil Rights Movement. Four presidents, Harry S. Truman, Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, and Lyndon B. Johnson had to deal with the most critical years of both the struggle for racial justice and the challenge of Communist totalitarianism. This historiographical article seeks to situate each of these presidents within the context of the explosion of literature on the presidency and the fight for black equality and to provide suggestive assessments of these presidencies and their successes and failures in addressing black demands.

Optimism of the Will. Antonio Gramsci Takes in Max Weber

“…Risk has often failed to deliver desired results and instead has generated unintended consequences borne mostly by already distressed populations [57]. But the understandably dour review does not account for real advances in the politics of racial equality [58], for example-U.S. segregation was legal until the past mid-century; apartheid ruled South Africa later still; and campaigns in women's rights, gay rights, and human rights in general would follow [59]. Too much intellectual sobriety, therefore, can give up healthy stimulation along with the risk of excess [60]; and abstention amounts to refusing agency [61].…”