The End of Respectability Politics: The United States Civil Rights Movement, Liberalism and The Vietnam War

Abstract

This thesis explores the interplay between the US Civil Rights Movement, the Vietnam War and Liberalism. It examines the positions civil rights leaders and the most significant civil rights organizations of the 1960s took on the Vietnam conflict, and tries to make sense of their connection to the liberal project. By charting the long history of African Americans' engagement in the US wars and exploring how they were influenced by anti-colonialist/anti-imperialist leaders and movements around the world, I seek to understand what ultimately informed the stances that the most prominent civil rights actors of the era assumed during the Vietnam conflict and why the war proved to be such a seminal moment for African Americans and their relationship with the state.