The Intersection of Race and Nuclear Weapons

This talk will focus on the intersection of race and nuclear weapons. I will provide an overview of my research and book, which examines Black activists who fought for nuclear disarmament, often connecting the nuclear issue with the fight for racial equality and liberation movements around the world. Beginning with the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, I will explore the shifting response of Black leaders and organizations, and of the broader African American public to the evolving nuclear arms race and general nuclear threat throughout the postwar period. Many in the African American community actively supported nuclear disarmament even when the cause abandoned by other groups during the McCarthy era, allowing the fight to abolish nuclear weapons to reemerge powerfully in the 1970s and beyond. Black leaders never gave the nuclear issue up or failed to see its importance, and by doing so, broadened the Black freedom movement and helped define it in terms of global human rights.