Short And Long Term Effects Of The Cold War

On May 10th, 1919, in Charleston, South Carolina, A black man shoved a white man on the sidewalk, escalating into a gunfight that resulted in 23 injured people and the death of 3 African Americans. The black community rejoiced when the murderers of Isaac Doctor, William Brown and James Talbot were identified, but when the killers’ verdict was given, the black community became frustrated with the weak sentence, one year in prison for only two of the five perpetrators.
This case was just the first of 32 incidents which happened between May and October in 1919. In nearly all cases of violence, white on black violence started conflict which ascended into escalation. As the number of participants in the conflicts rose, the severity of the issues
Following World War I, revolutions in Russia spawned a fear of the spread of communism. The Bolsheviks, an extremist group, organized a coup d’état which saw the rise of the first communist government called the Soviet Union. The first red scare was from 1917 to 1921; anarchists sent bombs through the mail and organized strikes against corporations. A fear of revolution made its way into the minds of every American during the 1920’s and even saw the rise of American communist groups. One of the reasons Americans were so scared, was the introduction of black communist groups. Founded by Cyril Briggs, the African Blood Brotherhood protected African Americans from riots and lynchings. Briggs main influence to create this groups was the Washington D.C. riot of 1919, in which he wrote about African Americans arming themselves for self-defense. Briggs soon began to see capitalism as the source of racial prejudice, and started to endorse Marxism in his writing. At a time when white supremacy was thriving, the idea of African Americans joining communists only worsened the fear of revolution in America. The African Blood Brotherhood soon joined other communist groups under the Workers Party of America and eventually, after many other merges, the Civil Rights Congress in 1946. Now merged together, many communist leaders were affiliated with the Civil Rights Congress due to the history of the
Capitalism revolving around social classes and wealth, contrasted with communism, which eliminated the need for money and consequently, social classes. From 1947 to 1991, the Cold War saw the division of the world into two categories, eastern communism or western capitalism. Because of the United States’ previous encounters with communism, it wasn’t hard for American citizens to support the war against communism. The United States abandoned its isolationist standing to help Western Europe and other struggling nations thwart communist parties. The Cold War resulted in the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the placement of the United States as the global hegemon. If the Red Scare had not made American citizens fear communism, the United States might have just allowed communism to freely expand. While, If not for the summer of 1919, the Red Scare might have never taken