Reckoning Day

Race, Place, and the Atom Bomb in Postwar America

Jacqueline Foertsch

• Publisher: Vanderbilt University Press
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9780826519276
• eBook ISBN: 9780826519283
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: North American History
• Index: Social Sciences

Too often lost in our understanding of the American Cold War crisis, with its nuclear brinkmanship and global political chess game, is the simultaneous crisis on the nation's racial front. Reckoning Day is the first book to examine the relationship of African Americans to the atom bomb in postwar America. It tells the wide-ranging story of African Americans' response to the atomic threat in the postwar period. It examines the anti-nuclear writing and activism of major figures such as W.E.B. Du Bois, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Lorraine Hansberry as well as the placement (or absence) of black characters in white-authored doomsday fiction and nonfiction. Author Jacqueline Foertsch analyzes the work of African American thinkers, activists, writers, journalists, filmmakers, and musical performers in the "atomic" decades of 1945 to 1965 and beyond. Her book tells the dynamic story of commitment and interdependence, as these major figures spoke with force and eloquence for nuclear disarmament, just as they argued unassailably for racial equality on numerous other occasions.

Foertsch also examines the placement of African American characters in white-authored doomsday novels, science fiction, and survivalist nonfiction such as government-sponsored forecasts regarding post-nuclear survival. In these, black characters are often displaced or absented entirely: in doomsday narratives they are excluded from executive decision-making and the stories' often triumphant conclusions; in the nonfiction, they are rarely envisioned amongst the "typical American" survivors charged with rebuilding US society. Throughout Reckoning Day, issues of placement and positioning provide the conceptual framework: abandoned at "ground zero" (America's inner cities) during the height of the atomic threat, African Americans were figured in white-authored survival fiction as compliant servants aiding white victory over atomic adversity, while as historical figures they were often perceived as "elsewhere" (indifferent) to the atomic threat. In fact, African Americans' "position" on the bomb was rarely one of silence or indifference. Ranging from appreciation to disdain to vigorous opposition, atomic-era African Americans developed diverse and meaningful positions on the bomb and made essential contributions to a remarkably American dialogue.

Index

Abbott, Robert S., 219n7

Acheson, Dean, 145–46, 147

“Advice to Joe” (Acuff), 224n2

Afro-Futurism, 26, 59, 60, 86, 90, 99, 216n5

air raid sirens, 122

aliens, association with alienation, 76–80, 91, 99–100

Alpert, Hollis, 187

American Friends Society, 150, 151

Anderson, Poul, 59, 78, 99 “Logic,” 70–72, 75, 216n2 “Prophecy,” 67 “Tomorrow’s Children,” 72–73

Anderson, Trezzvant W., 113, 115–17, 219n11

Armstrong, Louis, 129

“Atom and Evil” (Golden Gate Quartet), 208

“The Atomic Age” (Strangers Quartet), 208, 209

“Atomic Baby” (Milburn/Hayes), 205

“Atomic Bomb Blues” (Harris), 206

atomic clock, 156, 161

“Atomic Cocktail” (Slim Gaillard Quartette), 205, 208

“Atomic Energy” (Brown), 205

Atomic Energy Commission, 116, 121

“Atomic Love,” (Little Cesar), 204

“Atomic Nightmare” (Talbot Brothers), 203, 212

“Atomic Power” (Kirby), 207–09

“Atomic Telephone” (Harlan County Four), 210

“Atomic Telephone” (Spirit of Memphis Quartette), 29, 210–11

Baldwin, James, 143, 168, 173–74, 187–88, 223n3

—“The Black Boy Looks at the White Boy,” 173

—The Fire Next Time, 168–69, 174, 222n14

—“Notes for a Hypothetical Novel,” 223n3

—“Stagerlee wonders,” 222n3

ban-the-bomb accord. See Stockholm Peace Appeal

Barnett, Ross, 134

Bass, Charlotta A., 218n5

“B. Bomb Baby” (Jewels), 205

Beau, 190

“Beggars in Velvet” (Kutner and Moore), 57, 61, 66–67, 71, 99

Belafonte, Harry, 185–86, 198, 202, 223n6

Bennett, Lerone, Jr., 18, 207

Bethune, Mary McLeod, 120, 123

Bibb, Joseph D., 118, 178

“Bikini” (Gordon), 205

Bikini atoll testing, 208, 219n8

bikini bathing suit, 174

Bi...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Frontispiece
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction. Mapping Ground Zero in Postwar America
• One. “Extraordinarily Convenient Neighbors”: Servant-Savior-Savants in White-Authored Post-Nuclear Novels
• Two. “Tomorrow’s Children”: Interracial Conflict and Resolution in Atomic-Era Science Fiction and Afro-Futurism
• Three. Sidebar: Covering the Bomb in the African American Press
• Four. Against the “Starless Midnight of Racism and War”: African American Intellectuals and the Anti-Nuclear Agenda
• Five. Last Man Standing: Sex and Survival in the interracial Apocalyptic
• Conclusion. “Don’t Drop It, Stop It, Bebop It”: Some Final Notes on Race, Place, and the Atom Bomb in Postwar America
• Notes
• Works Cited
• Index