Eyes off the Prize
The United Nations and the African American Struggle for Human Rights, 1944–1955

A 2003 account of the politics that forced the NAACP to abandon their human rights agenda.

Carol Anderson (Author)

9780521531580, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 21 April 2003

318 pages, 19 b/w illus.
22.9 x 15 x 2 cm, 0.48 kg

'… compelling … Eyes off the Prize bravely punctures the reputations of some usually unimpeachable figures in the freedom pantheon. It also uncovers some less familiar examples of the brutality meted out against blacks in the postwar period … Anderson's work deserves the widest possible audience.' Journal of American Studies

This book was first published in 2003. As World War II drew to a close and the world awakened to the horror wrought by white supremacists in Nazi Germany, African American leaders, led by the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People), sensed the opportunity to launch an offensive against the conditions of segregation and inequality in America. The 'prize' they sought was not civil rights, but human rights. Only the human rights lexicon, shaped by the Holocaust and articulated by the United Nations, contained the language and the moral power to address not only the political and legal inequality but also the education, health care, housing, and employment needs that haunted the black community. But the onset of the Cold War and rising anti-communism allowed powerful Southerners to cast those rights as Soviet-inspired. Thus the Civil Rights Movement was launched with neither the language nor the mission it needed to truly achieve black equality.

Introduction: the struggle for black equality
1. Beyond Civil Rights: the NAACP, the United Nations, and redefining the struggle for black equality
2. The struggle for human rights: African Americans petition the United Nations
3. Things fall apart
4. Bleached souls and red negroes
5. The mirage of victory
Epilogue: the prize.

Subject Areas: Civil rights & citizenship [JPVH1], Politics & government [JP], Postwar 20th century history, from c 1945 to c 2000 [HBLW3], History of the Americas [HBJK]