Thread by @ProfPaulPoast

The passing of @repjohnlewis is an opportunity to reflect on the global influence of the civil rights movement.

How did the civil rights movement not just change 🇺🇸, but change the 🌎?

[THREAD]

This is a big question, perhaps too big.

But a useful way to start exploring it is to understand the civil rights movement's influence on the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union.

A great starting point is Brenda Gayle Plummer's "Rising Wind"

google.com/books/edition/…

As she writes in the book, from the earliest stages of the Cold War it was apparent that the civil rights agenda could eventually be a tool of international legitimacy

This builds on the idea highlighted by Bert Lockwood in the Iowa Law Review

Lockwood writes, "The Achilles' heel of the United States in assuming a world leadership role was the American dilemma - a national pattern of racial segregation that fundamentally deprived the black population of equal participation in society."

Similarly, consider the work of @marydudziak. The title of her @StanLRev piece says it all

In the piece, @marydudziak argues that racial segregation at home undercut US foreign policy

As she writes, "Accordingly, efforts to promote civil rights within the United States were consistent with, and important to, the more central U.S. mission of fighting world Communism."

This is an idea she expands upon in her @PrincetonUPress book

google.com/books/edition/…

In a recent @ForeignPolicy piece, @TravisLAdkins & @JDevermont offer some excellent examples of US policy makers being aware of "America's Achilles heel" in its Cold War struggle.

foreignpolicy-com.proxy.uchicago.edu/2020/06/19/ame…

One powerful example is from 1957, when the 101st Airborne was deployed to Little Rock to escort the "Little Rock Nine" into the recently desegregated Central High School

The students were eventually able to enter the school, but as Sec of State Dulles remarked, "the situation was ruining our foreign policy"

Of course, the causal arrow didn't run in one direction: Cold War competition used to promote civil rights at home.

It was also the case that civil rights groups sought to facilitate changes in foreign policy.

@AlvinBTilleryJr covers the efforts to change US policies towards decolonization...

google.com/books/edition/…

...while @AudieKlotz looks at pressure to end apartheid in South Africa.

books.google.com/books?id=MHqUz…

The totality of the domestic-international linkage in the civil rights movements was a core theme of Martin Luther King Jr's Nobel Peace Prize lecture

nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/1…

He observed that while one could view the civil rights movement as an event unfolding in America, that would miss the broader context

So as we celebrate John Lewis' life the the movement he helped lead, let's not forget how both transformed the 🌎, not just 🇺🇸.

[END]

Addendum 1: here is a better link to the @TravisLAdkins
& @JDevermont @ForeignPolicy piece:

foreignpolicy.com/2020/06/19/ame…

Addendum 2: Definitely work reading Sarah Snyder's @ColumbiaUP book "From Selma to Moscow" (h/t @JimGoldgeier)

google.com/books/edition/…