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INFORMATION TO USERS This manuscript has been reproduced from themicrofilm master. UMI films the text directly firom the originalor copy submitted. Thus, some thesis and dissertation copies are in typewriter face, while others may be from any type of computer printer. The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. Broken or indistinct print, colored or poor quality illustrations and photographs, print bleedthrough, substandard margins, and improper alignment can adversely affect reproduction. In the unlikely event that the author did not send UMI a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if unauthorized copyright material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. Oversize materials (e.g., maps, drawings, charts) are reproduced by sectioning the original, beginning at the upper left-hand comer and continuing ffom left to right in equal sections with small overlaps. Each original is also photographed in one exposure and is included in reduced form at the back of the book. Photogrtq}hs included in the original manuscript have been reproduced xerographically in this copy. Higher quality 6" x 9" black and white photographic prints are available for ai^r photographs or illustrations appearing in this copy for an additional charge. Contact UMI directly to order. UMI A Bell & Howell Information Com pany 300North Zeeb Road. Ann Arbor. Ml 48106-1346USA 313.'76l-4700 800/521-0600 EYES OFF THE PRIZE; AFRICAN-AMERICANS, THE UNITED NATIONS, AND THE STRUGGLE FOR HUMAN RIGHTS, 1944-1952 DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Carol Elaine Anderson, B.A., M.A, ***** The Ohio State University 1995 Dissertation Committee: Approved by Michael J. Hogan Peter L. Hahn Marshall F. Stevenson, Jr. ,Advise; Department of History UMI Number : 9544513 Copyright 1995 by Anderson, Carol Elaine All rights reserved. DMI Microform 9544513 Copyright 1995, by OHI Company. All rights reserved. This microform edition is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. UMI 300 North Zeeb Road Ann Arbor, MI 48103 Copyright by Carol Elaine Anderson 1995 To My Parents ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This dissertation is a testament of faith and unyielding support. For making it possible to balance each of my lives, I thank Elaine H. Hairston and E. Garrison Walters. My deepest thanks to Yolanda Comedy for providing friendship, laughter, music, and the best accommodations in Washington, D C. I also thank Sandra Hoeflich and Wendy Merchant for being my bridge over troubled waters and Ann Heiss for showing me how history is done. I am thankful to the Graduate School of The Ohio State University and the Committee on Institutional Cooperation for generous research grants. I am also honored to have the best adviser imaginable. Thank you Michael J. Hogan for your wisdom, unwavering support, incisive mind, and great sense of humor. I also thank my dissertation committee members, Peter L. Hahn, and Marshall F. Stevenson, Jr., for your advice and excellent comments. Ultimately, this dissertation is a tribute to my family. To my wonderful sons, Aaron and Drew, who helped me keep it all in perspective. To my brothers, Earl, David, and Wendell, who knew I could do it. To my mother, Beth, who cared lovingly for me and my children during my long nights of researching and writing. And to my father, George K.P. Anderson, who died shortly before I completed the dissertation. I love you. Ill VITA 17 June 1959............................................................................ Born - Fort Meade, Maryland 1981..........................................................................................B.A., Miami University, Oxford, Ohio 198 1..........................................................................................B.A., Miami University, Oxford, Ohio 198 2..........................................................................................M.A., Miami University Oxford, Ohio 1982-85.................................................................................... Administrator, United Service Company Columbus, Ohio 1985-Present............................................................................ Administrator/ Director/ AssociateVice Chancellor, Ohio Board of Regents Columbus, Ohio FIELDS OF STUDY Major Field; History Studies in American Diplomatic History Modern American History European Diplomatic History IV TABLE OF CONTENTS DEDICATION.......................................................................................................... ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS......................................................................................... iii VITA......................................................................................................................... iv CHAPTER PAGE I. THE AFRICAN-AMERICAN QUEST FOR HUMAN RIGHTS IN THE EARLY COLD WAR PERIOD: AN OVERVIEW 1 II. AN UNPRECEDENTED OPPORTUNITY: THE FOUNDING OF THE UNITED NATIONS AND THE EMERGENCE OF AFRICAN-AMERICAN INTERNATIONALISM...................... 14 III. THE STRUGGLE FOR HUMAN RIGHTS: AFRICAN- AMERICANS PETITION THE UNITED NATIONS................. 55 IV. THE DECLINING SIGNIFICANCE OF HUMAN RIGHTS: ANTI-COMMUNISM, THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION OF 1948, AND THE DISINTEGRATION OF AFRICAN- AMERICAN UNITY ..................................................................... 105 V. AMERICAN NEGRO VS. RED NEGRO: THE DISAPPEARANCE OF HUMAN RIGHTS FROM THE AFRICAN-AMERICAN AGENDA FOR EQUALITY............... 153 VI. CONCLUSION.................................................................................. 183 BIBLIOGRAPHY................................................................................................... 192 CHAPTER I The African-American Quest for Human Rights in the Early Cold War: An Overview M y soul looks back, less 1 forget' The Civil Rights Movement collapsed because African-American leaders overemphasized political rights and neglected the black community's substantial economic needs/ Scholars of the Civil Rights Movement have overlooked the fact, however, that this fateful strategy was formulated well before the 1960's, and is one of the most tragic legacies of the Cold War. Black leaders' abandonment of economic rights reaches back to the early postwar period when African-American leaders retreated from global human rights to national civil rights; from a broad prescription for black equality to a narrow definition of black success. For the most part, historians have ignored the impact of the Cold War on African- Americans, or the role that African-Americans played in shaping the foreign policy of the United States. Elaine Tyler May's work, for example, focuses on the "nuclear family in the nuclear age," but it is clear that her Cold War family does not include African-Americans. Instead, May is concerned with the way that the Cold War reimposed traditional gender roles on white men and women.^ Similarly, Paul Boyer's study is concerned with white 1 2 America's troubled adjustment to the threat of atomic annihilation. Only in the most tangential ways does he deal with the lives of African-Americans.'* Diplomatic historians, on the other hand, have not completely igrcred the issue of race, although most of their work on this issue deals with the effect of America's racial views on the prosecution of the war against Japan, or with U.S. policies toward particular countries or regions, such as China, the Caribbean, and Africa.^ Needed, as Melvyn P. Leffler has declared, is a better understanding of the "consequences of [U.S. foreign policy]. .at home." This dissertation answers Leffler's call. It explores the impact of the Cold War on the development of the Civil Rights Movement in the United States, as well as the efforts of African-Americans to influence the shape of U.S. foreign policy. Much of the literature on the Civil Rights Movement begins in 1955 in Montgomery, Alabama and ends with Martin Luther King, Jr.'s death in 1968. Only a few historians have looked for antecedents to the Civil Rights Movement in the pre-King era. Richard M. Dalfiume focused his attention on the critical period between 1939 and 1945, when African-Americans vigorously challenged the racial status quo, and demanded that the United States live up to its vaunted war aims. "What an opportunity the crisis has been," declared an editorial in \hQ Pittsburgh Courier, "for one to persuade, embarrass, compel and shame our government and our nation. .into a more enlightened attitude toward a tenth of its people."^ World War 11 was indeed a "watershed," but Dalfiume's study stops at the end of the Second World War and does not follow the trail of African- Americans into the immediate postwar period. 3 James L. Roark, relying solely upon secondary sources, explored this troubled time. He accurately depicted the early internationalist vision of the African-American leadership. He also noted how quickly global awareness reverted back to a domestic- centered agenda. Roark identified the Cold War as the major culprit responsible for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People's (NAACP) retreat to domesticity. He is less successful, however, in describing the motivations of the black Left and is silent about the consequences that resulted from the fateful choices made by African-American leaders during this period.® Even Mary L. Dudziak's pathbreaking study does not