Red Scare Racism and Cold War Black Radicalism

James Zeigler, Norman, Oklahoma, USA is an assistant professor of English at the University of Oklahoma.

Well-researched and convincingly argued, James Zeigler's study situates the United States Civil Rights Movement within the international black freedom struggle and reveals the damaging influence of the political discourse of anti-communism on the black freedom movement during the early years of the Cold War."" - Donald E. Pease, Ted and Helen Geisel Third Century Professor in the Humanities and professor of English at Dartmouth College.""In this bold and important study, James Zeigler shows how Cold War anti-communist rhetoric carved civil rights struggle away from an equally necessary work - that of repairing centuries-old white supremacist damage to US society and culture. Zeigler's chapters show the ways that African American thinkers - Richard Wright, C. L. R. James, Martin Luther King, and Frank Marshall Davis - wrote strong but largely unheard critiques of race/class oppression. Red Scare rhetoric practically banned those analyses, often just by branding the writer a Commie in print and visual media. Zeigler helps us to better understand why racial exclusion, oppression, and violence - as well as conspiracy mongers who insist our first African American president is a secret Commie - persist in the United States."" - Steven Weisenburger, Mossiker Chair in Humanities at Southern Methodist University.""James Zeigler contributes to at least three different fields - American studies, American Modernist literature, and rhetorical studies. This interdisciplinary focus is truly unique, demonstrating Zeigler's mastery of what are traditionally viewed as disparate areas. Zeigler ably traces similarities between the rhetoric of the Red Scare deployed against several black civil rights leaders and the resurrection of this rhetoric in attacks against Barack Obama's presidential candidacy. I highly recommend this thorough examination of the discourse shaping discussions about race and civil rights during the Cold War."" - Matthew Abraham, associate professor of English at the University of Arizona