Blacks Not Considered Part Of Everyday Life By Experts During Cold War Diplomacy

 

Headline from The Ashville Times, July 14, 1959

July 14, 1959, New York, New York – The United States State Department was paying for a big propaganda blitz against Communism right in the heart of Communism, the USSR. They had worked out an event in Moscow to be called the American National Exhibition. The idea was to show the average Russian how much better life was every day in the U.S. compared to their dull lives.

The American National Exhibition was planned to run from July 25^th to September 4^th of 1959. It would give a glimpse into fashion, food, men, women, and teenagers, but it was decided on this day that it wouldn’t really include Black Americans.

At a preview of the fashion show, the State Department and the artists designing the show displayed what they thought would be a vision of America that showed just a tiny bit of equality. The thinking behind this was that since the models were also going to be guides for the Russian people who came to the Exhibition. This included four young African Americans who had been vetted by President Eisenhower and promised not to go off script and talk about civil rights and inequality. The U.S. heard. “And You Are Lynching Negros,” frequently from the Soviets whenever human rights were discussed. The American National Exhibition was supposed to be a bit of cinema showing that equality was as American as apple pie.

Except that it was about to be revealed again, America was unequal. After the live dioramas were done, more than 40 fashion editors immediately took pen to paper in a petition demanding that the scenes with Negro models be cut. These scenes included a mixed wedding party and an integrated backyard barbeque.

“We, the American Fashion Press, protest the presentation of the American Fashions to Moscow as not being representative of typical American life.” Read the petition.

To avoid controversy with the fashion show, Leonard J. Hankin, vice president of high fashion department store Bergdorf-Goodman, was the executive director of the fashion show the exhibition promised immediate changes. The changes ended up being the removal of Black Americans from the integrated scenes.

  The four Black models were allowed to go to Moscow and act as guides since they had been studying Russian, but they did not model. The prejudice of high fashion was not even remarked upon by the New York Times or other major outlets; only smaller papers or the Black press called it out honestly.

Sources:

.newyorkalmanack.com/2024/07/american-national-exhibition/#:~:text=“Immediately%20after%20the%20previews%2C%20over,History%2C%20United%20States%20Information%20Agency

https://www.ajc.com/entertainment/calendar/black-model-remembers-time-russia-during-cold-war/Bn7LICWvhdl5jjBOWwHjXI/

Press and Sun-Bulletin, Binghamton, New York, Tue, Jul 14, 1959 · Page 18

The Asheville Times, Asheville, North Carolina,Tue, Jul 14, 1959 · Page 17

Everything Old is New Again: The Founding of the John Birch Society

 December 9, 1958, Retired candy manufacturer Robert Welch saw communists. He saw them in the White House. He thought the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court had to be one. So on this day in Indianapolis he and a few other men founded the John Birch Society to stop the spread of “Collectivism” and agitation for civil rights by Blacks.

The political advocacy society was named by Welch after one John Birch, who was an American Baptist who went to China as a missionary in 1940 but became an intelligence officer during World War Two and then was killed by Chinese Communists in 1945, in Welch’s mind he was a fervent anti-communist and the first causality of the cold war.

Welch brought in the founding members of the JBS including Harry Lynde Bradley, co-founder of the Allen Bradley Company and the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, and Fred C. Koch, founder of Koch Industries. Koch's sons, David, and Charles Koch, were also members of the JBS. However, both left it before the 1970s.

Welch was a conspiratorial thinker who coined the now ubiquitous term, “New World Order” and the belief their objective was a “'one-world socialist government.” He was against integration and believed that the Brown vs Board of Education decision was a hallmark of communist thinking and was an avowed enemy of Chief Justice Earl Warren.

Welch wrote in a widely circulated 1954 statement, The Politician, "Could Eisenhower really be simply a smart politician, entirely without principles and hungry for glory, who is only the tool of the Communists? The answer is yes." He went on. "With regard to ... Eisenhower, it is difficult to avoid raising the question of deliberate treason

Welch was also against the Civil Rights Movement.  According to the JBS, it constituted a communist plot to build a “Negro Soviet Republic” in the United States.  The “average American Negro,” according to the JBS in 1965, “has complete freedom of religion, freedom of movement, and freedom to run his own life as he pleases.” 

The radical and extremist ideas of the JBC were a rallying cry for many conservatives through the 50s and 60s but they also caused much dissension in the Republican party. Goldwater didn’t want their support, Reagan did not fully distance himself and William F. Buckley believed Welch was a dangerous nut.

During the civil disruptions of the 60s the JBS grew and grew but by 1968 the popularity was weakening and today, while still existent, it is behind groups like the Oathkeepers.

Sources:

https://politicalresearch.org/2014/01/21/john-birch-societys-anti-civil-rights-campaign-1960s-and-its-relevance-today

https://www.ncdcr.gov/blog/2016/12/09/roots-john-birch-society

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/01/11/a-view-from-the-fringe