Penn State

Consortium forSocial Movements and Education
Research and Practice

Home
Little rock as America: Hoyt Fuller, Europe, and the little rock racial crisis of 1957

Little rock as America: Hoyt Fuller, Europe, and the little rock racial crisis of 1957

Michael West
2012
2012

Abstract

West, M. O. (2012). Little rock as America: Hoyt Fuller, Europe, and the little rock racial crisis of 1957. Journal of Southern History, 78(4), 913-942.

Historians have long recognized that the civil rights struggle, though centered in the South, was national in scope.' More recent research has revealed the layered and varied international dimensions of the fight for African American freedom in the decades after World War II. The major actors in the civil rights drama—black activists, the federal government, segregationists in and out of govern ment at various levels—were keenly aware that they were operating on a world stage and that their audiences consisted of more than just disinterested spectators. For their part, civil rights activists applauded the ongoing global anticolonial struggles and took heart from the rise of new nation-states in Africa and Asia. As Martin Luther King Jr. noted in 1957, the year of the Little Rock crisis, "We have the privi lege of noticing in our generation the great drama of freedom and independence as it unfolds in Asia and Africa. All of these things are in line with the unfolding work of Providence."2 Apparently not as firmly directed by the hand of Providence, the makers of U.S. foreign policy found that their attempts to court the emerging Third World nations amid the twin dramas of decolonization and the cold war were complicated, even stymied, by Jim Crow. The Soviet Union was only too eager to point out that racial segregation belied U.S. claims to champion freedom at home and abroad. Even the closest allies of the United States, most notably in western Europe, joined in condemning the treatment of African Americans.3 Through it all, the defenders of Jim Crow remained unmoved. Declaring the civil rights movement a communist-inspired or communist-directed attack on the southern way of life, indeed on American civilization generally, some segrega tionists launched their own "white Atlantic" foreign policy, finding allies in such places as apartheid South Africa, white-minority-ruled Rhodesia, and the fascist Portuguese colonial regimes in Africa.4 In this way, the African  American struggle assumed a deep international cast at multiple levels
Article
Our Research
Full Publication

Abstract

West, M. O. (2012). Little rock as America: Hoyt Fuller, Europe, and the little rock racial crisis of 1957. Journal of Southern History, 78(4), 913-942.

Historians have long recognized that the civil rights struggle, though centered in the South, was national in scope.' More recent research has revealed the layered and varied international dimensions of the fight for African American freedom in the decades after World War II. The major actors in the civil rights drama—black activists, the federal government, segregationists in and out of govern ment at various levels—were keenly aware that they were operating on a world stage and that their audiences consisted of more than just disinterested spectators. For their part, civil rights activists applauded the ongoing global anticolonial struggles and took heart from the rise of new nation-states in Africa and Asia. As Martin Luther King Jr. noted in 1957, the year of the Little Rock crisis, "We have the privi lege of noticing in our generation the great drama of freedom and independence as it unfolds in Asia and Africa. All of these things are in line with the unfolding work of Providence."2 Apparently not as firmly directed by the hand of Providence, the makers of U.S. foreign policy found that their attempts to court the emerging Third World nations amid the twin dramas of decolonization and the cold war were complicated, even stymied, by Jim Crow. The Soviet Union was only too eager to point out that racial segregation belied U.S. claims to champion freedom at home and abroad. Even the closest allies of the United States, most notably in western Europe, joined in condemning the treatment of African Americans.3 Through it all, the defenders of Jim Crow remained unmoved. Declaring the civil rights movement a communist-inspired or communist-directed attack on the southern way of life, indeed on American civilization generally, some segrega tionists launched their own "white Atlantic" foreign policy, finding allies in such places as apartheid South Africa, white-minority-ruled Rhodesia, and the fascist Portuguese colonial regimes in Africa.4 In this way, the African  American struggle assumed a deep international cast at multiple levels

Social Movements

Black Power, Civil rights movement

Keywords

Globalization, North America, Race

Theme

Popular Education; Adult Education; and Social Movement Learning

Related People

Michael West