Despite the impressive volume of literature on the civil rights movement and US race policies, the connection between American foreign policy during World War II and the postwar years and America's race policy remains largely unexplored. Focusing on this gap, Professor Layton's book shows that the revolutionary changes in world politics in the wake of WWII created new opportunities and pressure points for reforming US race policies. The Holocaust, the dismantling of colonial empires, the Cold War, and the establishment of the United Nations had a major impact in creating the Executive and Judicial branch of the Federal government shifts from a seventy year old hands-off policy to the advocacy of civil rights reform. This book further reveals how civil rights leaders utilized foreign policy issues and Cold War politics to press for domestic policy reforms in the United States.

‘In this gem of a study, Azza Layton documents an untold part of the American civil rights story and, in the process, teaches social movement theorists how international conditions can influence prospects for movement success.’

Theda Skocpol - Harvard University

‘The literature on the domestic history of the civil rights movement in the USA is vast. But not until Azza Layton’s study has there been a major examination of the international dimensions of this movement. She essentially breaks new ground, brilliantly disclosing the remarkable extent to which civil rights leaders in America looked to foreign actors for support and leverage in their own struggle.’

Walter Dean Burnham - The University of Texas, Austin

‘An empirically rich, theoretically important account of the role of international pressure in the Cold War shift in US civil rights policy. Not only does the book represent a significant contribution to the historiography of the civil rights struggle, but an important corrective to the ‘nation-centric’ focus of most social movement research.’

Douglas McAdam - Stanford University