756 Chapter 28 Collision Courses, Abroad and at Home: 1946–1960
“Godless” communism posed an ideological as
well as military threat. In 1954 the Reverend George
Docherty warned his Presbyterian congregation in
Washington, DC, that “little Muscovites” in the
Soviet Union were pledging allegiance to “hammer
and sickle” atheism. But an “atheistic American,” he
intoned, was “a contradiction in terms.” Later that
day Eisenhower, commenting on the sermon, told a
radio audience that whatever their “personal creed,”
Americans still “believed in a higher power.” A few
months later he signed a law that added the phrase
“one nation under God” to the Pledge of Allegiance.
The next year, Congress added “In God We Trust” to
the nation’s currency.
Blacks Challenge Segregation
Another front in the Cold War concerned race rela-
tions. How could African and Asian leaders be per-
suaded to reject communism and follow the
example of the United States when American blacks
were treated so poorly? American diplomats winced
when the finance minister of Ghana was refused a
meal at the Howard Johnson’s, a chain restaurant,
in Dover, Delaware. “Colored people are not
allowed to eat in here,” the manager explained to
the African leader. Vice President Nixon, no liberal
on racial matters but an ardent enemy of commu-
nism, declared, “In the world-wide struggle in
which we are engaged, racial prejudice is a gun we
point at ourselves.”
But racial confrontations remained in the news.
During and after World War II, like a glacier, slowly
but with massive force, a demand for change had
developed in the South. Its roots lay in southern
industrialization, in the shift from small sharecrop-
ping holdings to large commercial farms, in the vast
wartime expenditures of the federal government on
aircraft factories and army bases in the region; in the
impact of the GI Bill on southern colleges and univer-
sities, and in the gradual development of a southern
black middle class.
Black soldiers who had served abroad demanded
that they be treated with respect when they returned
home. In 1947 Jackie Robinson, a black officer who
had been court-martialed—and acquitted—for refus-
ing to move to the back of a segregated military bus
during World War II, was ready to integrate major
league baseball. When his team—the Brooklyn
Dodgers—checked into the Ben Franklin Hotel in
Philadelphia, he was refused a room. A week later the
Dodgers went to Pittsburgh. When he took his posi-
tion at second base, the Pirates refused to come onto
the field. Only under threat of forfeiting the game
would they play against Robinson.
In this photo opportunity, Phillies manager Ben Chapman refused to
shake Jackie Robinson’s hand. Instead, he leaned toward Robinson
and said quietly, “Jackie, you know, you’re a good ballplayer, but
you’re still a nigger to me.” Robinson replied by leading the Dodgers
to the pennant and winning Rookie of the Year honors.Ordinary blacks, too, demanded fairer treat-
ment. More insisted on their right to vote—and
many got it. In 1940 only 2 percent of African
Americans in the south were registered to vote; by
1947, that had increased to 12 percent. But white
resistance remained formidable. In 1946 Eugene
Talmadge, behind in the polls, won his race for gov-
ernor by promising that if he were elected “no
Negro will vote in Georgia for four years.” One
black man who succeeded in registering was gunned
down in front of his house.
The NAACP (the National Association for the
Advancement of Colored People) decided that the
time had come to challenge segregation in the
courts. Thurgood Marshall, the organization’s
chief staff lawyer, went from state to state filing
legal challenges to the “separate but equal” princi-
ple laid down inPlessy v. Fergusonin 1896 (see
Chapter 20.) In 1938 the Supreme Court had
ordered the University of Missouri law school to
admit a black student because no law school for
blacks existed in the state. This decision gradually
forced some southern states to admit blacks to
advanced programs. “You can’t build a cyclotron