African Americans against the bomb : nuclear weapons, colonialism, and the black freedom movement / Vincent J. Intondi ; designed by Bruce Lundquist.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Intondi, Vincent J., author.

Contributor:

Lundquist, Bruce, designer.

Series:

Stanford nuclear age series.

Stanford Nuclear Age Series.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

African American political activists--History--20th century.

African American political activists.

African Americans--Politics and government--20th century.

African Americans.

Antinuclear movement--United States--History--20th century.

Antinuclear movement.

Civil rights movements--United States--History--20th century.

Civil rights movements.

Anti-imperialist movements--United States--History--20th century.

Anti-imperialist movements.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (225 pages)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Stanford, California : Stanford University Press, 2015.

Language Note:

In English.

Summary:

Well before Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke out against nuclear weapons, African Americans were protesting the Bomb. Historians have generally ignored African Americans when studying the anti-nuclear movement, yet they were some of the first citizens to protest Truman's decision to drop atomic bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. Now for the first time, African Americans Against the Bomb tells the compelling story of those black activists who fought for nuclear disarmament by connecting the nuclear issue with the fight for racial equality. Intondi shows that from early on, blacks in America saw the use of atomic bombs as a racial issue, asking why such enormous resources were being spent building nuclear arms instead of being used to improve impoverished communities. Black activists' fears that race played a role in the decision to deploy atomic bombs only increased when the U.S. threatened to use nuclear weapons in Korea in the 1950's and Vietnam a decade later. For black leftists in Popular Front groups, the nuclear issue was connected to colonialism: the U.S. obtained uranium from the Belgian controlled Congo and the French tested their nuclear weapons in the Sahara. By expanding traditional research in the history of the nuclear disarmament movement to look at black liberals, clergy, artists, musicians, and civil rights leaders, Intondi reveals the links between the black freedom movement in America and issues of global peace. From Langston Hughes through Lorraine Hansberry to President Obama, African Americans Against the Bomb offers an eye-opening account of the continuous involvement of African Americans who recognized that the rise of nuclear weapons was a threat to the civil rights of all people.

Contents:

Front matter

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Chapter 1. The Response to the Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki

2. “We Will Not Go Quietly into the Night”: Fighting for Peace and Freedom During the McCarthy Era

3. “Links in the Same Chain”: Civil Rights, Anticolonialism, and the Bomb in Africa

4. “Desegregation Not Disintegration”: The Black Freedom Movement, Vietnam, and Nuclear Weapons

5. “From Civil Rights to Human Rights”: African American Activism in the Post-Vietnam Era

6. A New START: Nuclear Disarmament in the Age of Obama

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9780804793483

0804793484

OCLC:

1178769651