World War II, the Cold War, and the Long Civil Rights Movement in America

Abstract

The civil rights movement in America serves as one of the most fundamental struggles for equality in the 20th century, as activists including Martin Luther King Jr. and civil rights groups such as the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People (NAACP) and the National Urban League strived to end racial segregation and discrimination in America. Despite the significance of domestic developments throughout the civil rights movement, it is also important to acknowledge the effects of global events and international relations on its progresses. This paper attempts to focus on examining this aspect of the civil rights movement by looking at two case studies: the World War II and the Cold War. Through exploring previous works discussing their impacts on the course of events during the movement, it may be suggested that the latter wasnt simply a domestically-motivated social struggle free of foreign influences and that global crisis at the time (such as the Second World War and the Cold War) and the civil rights movement werent parallel events with little connections. On the contrary, as many scholars suggested, the fact that the civil rights movement took place during those two long-lasting battles was no coincidence.