NO Soviet Union, how important is Paul Robeson in the USA

[Derek Jackson]

Robeson was an impressive person. His one HUGE error was supporting the Soviet Union..

Had it not existed I picture him being a MAJOR leader of the Civil Rights movement.


If the lack of a USSR prevented WW2 how much would the Civil Rights movement be weakened?

 

[marktaha]

More successful career at least.

 

[CHKeeley]

Without a USSR and a WW2, that entirely butterflies a recognizable Civil Rights movement. Without those two developments, which directly lead to an international upsurge in anti-colonial and racial equality movements as the empires fell or had to reorganize, I believe any concerted efforts at Civil Rights will probably be set back decades if I had to guess. If that’s the case, it would be hard for Robeson to become a major leader so late in his life.

 

[Workable Goblin]

Without a USSR and a WW2, that entirely butterflies a recognizable Civil Rights movement. Without those two developments, which directly lead to an international upsurge in anti-colonial and racial equality movements as the empires fell or had to reorganize, I believe any concerted efforts at Civil Rights will probably be set back decades if I had to guess.

Nah. While the big movements took place in the 1950s and 1960s, sure, if you start looking into the actual history of the Civil Rights Movement it actually started taking form in the 1920s and 1930s, pretty much as soon as Jim Crow had descended in full force. In particular, the NAACP court cases that led up to Brown v. Board of Education started in the mid-1930s with Murray v. Peterson (a Maryland case), and were part of a very calculated strategy to attack segregation for "facilities that could not be easily duplicated". While not totally successful, it was more successful than not, again even in the 1930s--for example, in 1938 the Supreme Court found in Missouri ex. rel. Gaines v. Canada that the University of Missouri had to either admit Gaines to the law school or create a separate segregated law school (which is what they in fact did, especially since Gaines disappeared himself due to the stress of the lawsuit so they couldn't continue the case the way they later did with Sweatt v. Painter).

This might not seem like much of a victory, granted, but there was no segregated law school in Missouri at the time, so it still represented some degree of forward progress. This shows that concerted efforts were already going on essentially before the Soviets or World War II were relevant...they would certainly continue in their absence. They might be somewhat less successful, but it really is hard to judge that. The pendulum was swinging away from Jim Crow regardless of outside factors.

 

[CHKeeley]

Nah. While the big movements took place in the 1950s and 1960s, sure, if you start looking into the actual history of the Civil Rights Movement it actually started taking form in the 1920s and 1930s, pretty much as soon as Jim Crow had descended in full force. In particular, the NAACP court cases that led up to Brown v. Board of Education started in the mid-1930s with Murray v. Peterson (a Maryland case), and were part of a very calculated strategy to attack segregation for "facilities that could not be easily duplicated". While not totally successful, it was more successful than not, again even in the 1930s--for example, in 1938 the Supreme Court found in Missouri ex. rel. Gaines v. Canada that the University of Missouri had to either admit Gaines to the law school or create a separate segregated law school (which is what they in fact did, especially since Gaines disappeared himself due to the stress of the lawsuit so they couldn't continue the case the way they later did with Sweatt v. Painter).

This might not seem like much of a victory, granted, but there was no segregated law school in Missouri at the time, so it still represented some degree of forward progress. This shows that concerted efforts were already going on essentially before the Soviets or World War II were relevant...they would certainly continue in their absence. They might be somewhat less successful, but it really is hard to judge that. The pendulum was swinging away from Jim Crow regardless of outside factors.

I’m not denying that these efforts had been ongoing prior to the 1950s and 1960s, hell the struggle for civil rights has been going on since the first Africans were brought ashore in chains to the Americas. That much is undeniable. At the same time though, I really don’t think you can discount the effects of such massive changes to international politics and the world order as simply “outside factors”. I don’t really believe you can call a conflict like the Second World War as a phenomenon purely external to the United States given how deeply things were changed from 1935 to 1950. Of course, the struggle for Civil Rights would continue without the two events, but also I don’t think you can say it would not have been fundamentally altered. Especially if you consider the impact that American communism had with the early Civil Rights movement, with figures like W.E.B. DuBois or Harry Haywood, and the work done in a lot of black communities like the famous Alabama organizers. Without the Soviet Union, obviously this would be massively different. Without a Second World War, the United States stays somewhat insular on the international stage, does not rapidly grow to the extent it did, does not have the experiences of black servicemen in WW2 informing Civil Rights struggles, and I think most importantly does not have the Second Great Migration due to the jobs created by WW2. The very same migration that produced some of the most famous figures of the Civil Rights and Black Power movements. I think these two changes are significant enough to the domestic history of the United States that it is at least quite reasonable to say that the Civil Rights movement would go on to develop very differently, and perhaps a lot later without these developments.

 

[Capbeetle61]

Without a USSR and a WW2, that entirely butterflies a recognizable Civil Rights movement. Without those two developments, which directly lead to an international upsurge in anti-colonial and racial equality movements as the empires fell or had to reorganize, I believe any concerted efforts at Civil Rights will probably be set back decades if I had to guess. If that’s the case, it would be hard for Robeson to become a major leader so late in his life.

I’m not denying that these efforts had been ongoing prior to the 1950s and 1960s, hell the struggle for civil rights has been going on since the first Africans were brought ashore in chains to the Americas. That much is undeniable. At the same time though, I really don’t think you can discount the effects of such massive changes to international politics and the world order as simply “outside factors”. I don’t really believe you can call a conflict like the Second World War as a phenomenon purely external to the United States given how deeply things were changed from 1935 to 1950. Of course, the struggle for Civil Rights would continue without the two events, but also I don’t think you can say it would not have been fundamentally altered. Especially if you consider the impact that American communism had with the early Civil Rights movement, with figures like W.E.B. DuBois or Harry Haywood, and the work done in a lot of black communities like the famous Alabama organizers. Without the Soviet Union, obviously this would be massively different. Without a Second World War, the United States stays somewhat insular on the international stage, does not rapidly grow to the extent it did, does not have the experiences of black servicemen in WW2 informing Civil Rights struggles, and I think most importantly does not have the Second Great Migration due to the jobs created by WW2. The very same migration that produced some of the most famous figures of the Civil Rights and Black Power movements. I think these two changes are significant enough to the domestic history of the United States that it is at least quite reasonable to say that the Civil Rights movement would go on to develop very differently, and perhaps a lot later without these developments.

The South would probably still be Democratic today.

A modern-day Jim Crow would make a great ATL. South African-style apartheid, maybe?

And how would a White Russia have affected domestic politics in both Europe and the USA? What about their foreign policy towards this new Russia?

 

[Workable Goblin]

I think these two changes are significant enough to the domestic history of the United States that it is at least quite reasonable to say that the Civil Rights movement would go on to develop very differently, and perhaps a lot later without these developments.

And I think that neither of them is actually significant enough to make a very substantial difference to the timeline of the civil rights movement, or equivalently that there are countervailing factors that push in the opposite direction from the conclusion you want to make--for example, you mention the ties of certain civil rights figures to Communism, but Communism and left-wing thought in the United States was badly damaged by the Soviet Union, not helped by them. The First Red Scare, which was closely tied to the formation of the Soviet Union, greatly weakened the political left wing in the United States through imprisonments, deportations, and other forms of political violence and suppression, and the association of many civil rights figures with Communism itself gave opponents of civil rights a powerful weapon to beat civil rights organizers around the head with. Moreover, the Soviets quickly established a vise-like grip on world Communist parties, which proved to be a serious vice; they were trying to orchestrate their activities from the point of view of Moscow, without much reference to local conditions. Thus, not having the Soviet Union around could very well strengthen the civil rights movement, by making the left-wing in the United States stronger and removing the perception (and sometimes reality) of foreign ties from the movement. Frankly, I think color TV is more important than either the Soviets or World War II in spurring support for civil rights, and if anything that was slowed down by the war.

Overall, what I see when I look at the history is a movement that was being driven largely by factors internal to the United States, primarily a reaction to the extremeness of the Jim Crow laws that were established in the late 19th and early 20th century, with factors such as the war--even taking into account the domestic effects of the war--and the Soviet Union and Cold War playing a secondary role at most. The effects of the formation of the Soviet Union and then World War II may have influenced the exact course of events somewhat, but by and large the actual movement seems to me to fit a larger pendulum pattern in American domestic politics between relatively brief comparatively popular attempts to spread civil rights and reduce oppression of African-Americans, like the previous period of Reconstruction, and longer periods of relative indifference by most of the white population and extreme hostility on the part of the South. The details most certainly would have been different, but I don't think the timeline would end up being all that different in the end, certainly not to the point of Jim Crow continuing for "decades" past when it ended IOTL or to the modern day. An interesting setting for a story, but it doesn't strike me as realistic.