Imperial Anticommunism and the African American Freedom Movement in the Early Cold War

This article draws on social-movement knowledge production to argue that early cold war anticommunism in the United States was related to the broader history of US empire and had, on balance, a negative impact on the African American freedom movement. This argument first elaborates on the notion of cold-war anticommunism as a facet of empire ‘at home’, then turns to three examples of anticolonialism in the United States in the period between the Second World War and the 1960s.