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Making the World in Atlanta's Image: The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, Morris Abram, and the Legislative History of the United Nations Race Convention

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 May 2014

H. Timothy Lovelace Jr.
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Atlanta's human rights community was buzzing, because the United Nations (U.N.) was coming to town. On Sunday, January 19, 1964, the front page of the Atlanta Daily World, the city's oldest black newspaper and the South's only black daily, announced, “United Nations Rights Panel to Visit Atlanta.” The U.N. Sub-Commission on the Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities (Sub-Commission), the Daily World explained, was a fourteen nation “body that surveys the worldwide problems of discrimination.” The Sub-Commission had been invited to Atlanta by Morris Abram, a former Atlanta attorney and the lone United States member of the Sub-Commission, to study first-hand the city's well-publicized, efforts to improve in race relations. Sunday morning's Daily World also noted that the U.N. delegation “composed of experts, mostly lawyers and jurists” was in the midst of drafting a global treaty designed to end racial discrimination, and the local paper highlighted Abram's role as the primary drafter of the race accord. “Mr. Abram, as the U.S. expert on the subcommission has proposed a sweeping eight-point treaty,” the article reported. According to the Daily World, the pending race treaty—the treaty that would ultimately become the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD or Convention)—would address “segregation, hate groups and discrimination in public accommodations.”

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Law and History Review , Volume 32 , Issue 2 , May 2014 , pp. 385 - 429
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Copyright © the American Society for Legal History, Inc. 2014 

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References

1. “United Nations Panel to Visit Atlanta,” Atlanta Daily World, January 19, 1964, 1. See also International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, January 4, 1969, 660 U.N.T.S. 195 (hereafter ICERD).

2. “73 Demonstrators Released on Bond,” Atlanta Constitution, January 20, 1964, 3.

3. See, for example, Payne, Charles, I've Got the Light of Freedom: Organizing Tradition and the Mississippi Freedom Struggle (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997)Google Scholar; and Dittmer, John, Local People: The Struggle for Civil Rights in Mississippi (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1995)Google Scholar. See also Brown-Nagin, Tomiko, Courage to Dissent: Atlanta and the Long History of the Civil Rights Movement (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011)Google Scholar.

4. See Plummer, Brenda Gayle, “The Changing Face of Diplomatic History: A Literature Review,” The History Teacher 38 (2005): 385Google Scholar. See also Richardson, Henry III, The Origins of African-American Interests in International Law (Durham: Carolina Academic Press, 2008)Google Scholar; Anderson, Carol, Eyes Off the Prize: The United Nations and the African American Struggle for Human Rights, 1944–1955 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003)Google Scholar; Borstelmann, Thomas, The Cold War and the Color Line: American Race Relations in the Global Arena (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2003)Google Scholar; Plummer, Brenda Gayle, Window on Freedom: Race, Civil Rights, and Foreign Affairs, 1945–1988 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Meriweather, James, Proudly We Can Be Africans: Black Americans and Africa, 1935–1961 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002)Google Scholar; Dudziak, Mary, Cold War Civil Rights: Race and the Image of American Democracy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000)Google Scholar; Von Eschen, Penny, Race Against Empire: Black Americans and Anticolonialism, 1937–1957 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1997)Google Scholar; Plummer, Brenda Gayle, Rising Wind: Black Americans and U.S. Foreign Affairs, 1935–1960 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996)Google Scholar; and Horne, Gerald, Black and Red: W.E.B. Du Bois and the Afro-American Response to the Cold War, 1944–1963 (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1986)Google Scholar. For other, innovative historical studies exploring United States contributions to international human rights law, see, for example, Borgwardt, Elizabeth, A New Deal for the World: America's Vision for Human Rights (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2005)Google Scholar; and Glendon, Mary Ann, A World Made New: Eleanor Roosevelt and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (New York: Random House, 2001)Google Scholar.

5. Wilkins, Fanon Che, “The Making of Black Internationalists: SNCC and Africa before the Launching of Black Power, 1960–1965,” Journal of African American History 92 (2007): 468Google Scholar; and Grady-Willis, Winston, Challenging U.S. Apartheid: Atlanta and Black Struggles for Human Rights, 1960–1977 (Durham: Duke University Press, 2006)Google Scholar.

6. Lerner, Natan, The U.N. Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (Alphen aan den Rijn: Sijthoff and Noordhoff International Publishers, 1980)Google Scholar.

7. See ICRED, art. 4. Article 4, among other things, states that parties to the Convention shall criminalize “all dissemination of ideas based on racial superiority or hatred” and “shall declare illegal and prohibit organizations, and also organized and all other propaganda activities, which promote and incite racial discrimination, and shall recognize participation in such organizations or activities as on offence punishable by law.”

8. See, for example, Farrior, Stephanie, “Molding the Matrix: The Historical and Theoretical Foundations of International Law Concerning Hate Speech,” 14 Berkeley Journal of International Law (1996): 1Google Scholar; Defeis, Elizabeth, “Freedom of Speech and International Norms: A Response to Hate Speech,” 29 Stanford Journal of International Law (1992): 57Google Scholar; Matsuda, Mari, “Public Response to Racist Speech: Considering the Victim's Story,” 87 Michigan Law Review (1989): 2320Google Scholar; Meron, Theodor, “The Meaning and Reach of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination,” 79 American Journal of International Law (1985): 283CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Jones, Thomas, “Article 4 of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination and the First Amendment,” 23 Howard Law Journal (1980): 429Google Scholar; Schwelb, Egon, “The International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination,” 15 International and Comparative Law Quarterly (1996): 996Google Scholar.

9. See, for example, Brown-Nagin, Courage to Dissent; Grady-Willis, Challenging U.S. Apartheid; Hornsby, Alton Jr., Black Power in Dixie: A Political History of African. Americans in Atlanta (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2009)Google Scholar; Hogan, Wesley C., Many Minds, One Heart: SNCC's Dream for a New America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007)Google Scholar; Lassiter, Matthew, The Silent Majority: Suburban Politics in the Sunbelt South (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006)Google Scholar; Kruse, Kevin, White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of Modern Conservatism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005)Google Scholar; Nasstrom, Kathryn, “Down to Now: Memory, Narrative, and Women's Leadership in the Civil Rights Movement in Atlanta, Georgia,” 11 Gender and History (2002): 113Google Scholar; Mason, Herman, Politics, Civil Rights, and Law in Black Atlanta, 1870-1970 (Charleston: Arcadia Publishing, 2000)Google Scholar; Bayor, Ronald, Race and the Shaping of Twentieth Century Atlanta (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 1996)Google Scholar; Harmon, David Andrew, Beneath the Image of the Civil Rights Movement and Race Relations, Atlanta, Georgia, 1946-1981 (New York: Garland, 1996)Google Scholar; Fairclough, Adam, To Redeem the Soul of America (Athens: University of Georgia, 1987)Google Scholar; Carson, Clayborne, In Struggle: SNCC and the Black Awakening of the 1960s (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1981)Google Scholar.

10. See Wilkins, The Making of Black Internationalists, 490; Kruse, White Flight, 216; Harmon, Beneath the Image, 185. See also Grady-Willis, Challenging U.S. Apartheid, 205-208. Grady-Willis provides the most critical and thought-provoking analysis of the events surrounding the January 1964 U.N. protests of any historian to date. This article benefits greatly from his scholarship on the movement in Atlanta.

11. Forman, James, The Making of Black Revolutionaries (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1972)Google Scholar, 338.

12. Ibid., 336.

13. “John Lewis, Six Month Report,” December 27, 1963, Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee Papers (microfilm), reel 2, frame 40 (hereafter SNCC Papers). See also Zinn, Howard, SNCC: The New Abolitionists (Cambridge: South End Press, 1964)Google Scholar, 146. “The major difference between us and those who had joined the organization earlier was that we were never committed to nonviolence as anything more than a tactic.”

14. Forman, The Making of Black Revolutionaries, 338.

15. “One Man, One Vote: Jobs and Food Conference,” November 29–30, 1963, SNCC Papers, reel 55, frame, 14; “Over 300 Attend SNCC Conference,” The Student Voice, December 9, 1963, 2.

16. During the March on Washington, Lewis proclaimed, “‘One man, one vote,’ is the African cry. It is ours, too. It must be ours. Let us tell the Congress: One man, one vote.” Forman, The Making of Black Revolutionaries, 337–38.

17. In upper South cities such as Danville, Virginia, the blue-collar town on the North Carolina border, desegregation-minded, SNCC workers braved mounted machine guns, high-pressured fire hoses, riot tanks, and indictments for “incit[ing] the colored population to acts of violence or war against the white population.” See “Brutality Scored by SNCC Workers,” The Student Voice, August 1963, 2. imilarly, in Deep South areas such as Southwest Georgia, SNCC workers attempting to desegregate movie theatres and cafes were bludgeoned by “police officers … armed with guns, two-foot clubs, electric cattle prodders, and black jacks.” See “Police Smash Demonstrators,” The Student Voice, October 1963, 2.

18. Forman, The Making of Black Revolutionaries, 360–61. SNCC's confrontation with these legal issues during the Atlanta sit-ins of the early and mid-1960s became a critical piece of the legislative history of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. See, generally, Brown-Nagin, Courage to Dissent.

19. William B. Hartsfield, Mayor of Atlanta from 1936 to 1961, coined the city's moniker. See Bayor, Ronald, Race and the Shaping of Twentieth Century Atlanta (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996)Google Scholar, 31.

20. Allen, Ivan Jr., Mayor: Notes on the Sixties (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1971), 90–93Google Scholar, 103. See also Grady-Willis, Challenging U.S. Apartheid, 33; and Harmon, Beneath the Image of the Civil Rights Movement, 152–54.

21. See, generally, Constance Curry Papers, Emory University, Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library, (MARBL), Series 3, Box 9, Folder 7 (hereafter Curry Papers).

22. Allen, Mayor, 103.

23. “Atlanta: Protests and Progress,” March 27, 1964, Eliza Paschall Papers, Emory University, MARBL, Series 1, Box 6, Folder 1 (hereafter Paschall Papers).

24. In addition to SNCC and COAHR, the other organizations sponsoring the SLC were the Atlanta Committee for Cooperative Action, the Atlanta Branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the Atlanta affiliate of the SCLC, the All-Citizens Registration Committee, the Atlanta Negro Voters League, Operation Breadbasket, and the Gandhi Youth Society. More than 200 people attended the meeting. Ibid. See above, note 25.

25. “Saturday's Leadership Conference,” Atlanta Daily World, October 22, 1963, 4. See also Grady-Willis, Challenging U.S. Apartheid, 42; and “Action for Democracy,” November 1, 1963, Paschall Papers, Series 4, Box 15, Folder 3.

26. “Action for Democracy,” November 1, 1963, Paschall Papers, Series 4, Box 15, Folder 3. The SLC clearly understood how Atlanta's racial image was used to counter the negative national and international images of Southern race relations, and the umbrella organization attempted to prick local elites' consciences by using Cold War, civil rights logic. In the SLC's first public document, the group proclaimed, “Presently, Atlanta enjoys the enviable opportunity of being in a position to help resuscitate America's soul and to help revitalize the hopes and aspirations of free people everywhere.” Ibid. The formation of the SLC was also significant, because the scope of the group's “battle plan” challenged the widely held misconception that the civil rights movement of the early 1960s was unconcerned with economic justice. For a fuller account of the progressive reforms proposed by the SLC, see “Atlanta Summit Leadership Conference Workshop Report,” October 19, 1963, Paschall Papers, Series 4, Box 15, Folder 3; and “Atlanta City-Wide Leadership Conference,” n.d., James Forman Papers, Library of Congress, Container 33, Folder Atlanta, 1963–1964 (hereafter Forman Papers).

27. “Leadership Conference Sets for ‘Pilgrimage for Democracy,’” Atlanta Daily World, December 8. 1963, 1; “More Committeemen Coordinate Plans for Sunday Park Assembly,” Atlanta Daily World, December 12, 1963, 1; “Sunday Assembly Speakers Named,” Atlanta Daily World, December 14, 1963, 1; “Leadership Conference Assembly at Hurt Park Today,” Atlanta Daily World, December 15, 1963, 1; “3000 March in Atlanta,” The Student Voice, December 16, 1963, 1; and Harmon Perry, “Hurt Park Assembly Draws Many Despite Bitter Cold,” Atlanta Daily World, December 17, 1963, 1.

28. “Atlanta Summit Leadership Conference—For Immediate Release,” December 10, 1963, Paschall Papers, Series 4, Box 15, Folder 3. The march organizers noted, “This marked the first time many Atlanta Negro adults had participated in any kind of demonstration and the first time that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., had spoken in Atlanta at the invitation of all civil rights organizations, although he is a native of Atlanta and co-pastor with his father of a local Baptist Church, and the national office of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference is in Atlanta.” Ibid. This appearance was rare, because King attempted to minimize his conflict with Atlanta's moderate racial leadership through an unwritten pledge not to launch demonstrations in his hometown. See Branch, Taylor, Pillar of Fire: America in the King Years, 1963–1965 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1998)Google Scholar, 192.

29. “Paul Good interviewing segregationist Lester Maddox,” n.d., Paul Good Papers, Emory University, MARBL, Georgia CD1 (hereafter Good Papers); “Statement by Atlanta Restaurant Association,” Atlanta Constitution, January 27, 1964, 20; and M. Charles Baskt, “Atlanta: A Study in Strife,” Brown Daily Herald, February 3, 1964, 1.

30. “Atlanta,” December 16, 1963, Forman Papers, Container 33, Folder Atlanta, 1963–1964; and Debbie H. Amis, “Atlanta,” SNCC Papers, December 16, 1963, reel 37, frame 42.

31. “Kenya Leaders to See City Today,” Atlanta Daily World, December 21, 1963, 1; and Harmon Perry, “Kenya Officials See Atlanta Area,” Atlanta Daily World, December 22, 1963, 1.

32. Forman, The Making of Black Revolutionaries, 360–61. See also “Charles Cobb, Jr., From Atlanta to East Africa,” in No Easy Victories: African Liberation and American Activists Over Half a Century, ed. Minter, William, Hovey, Gail, and Cobb, Charles Jr. (Trenton: Africa World Press, 2008)Google Scholar, 101; Bond, Julian, “SNCC: What We Did,” Monthly Review 52 (2000): 14Google Scholar; and King, Mary, Freedom Song; A Personal Story of the 1960s Civil Rights Movement (New York: William Morrow, 1987), 164–69Google Scholar.

33. “Christmas in Jail,” The Student Voice, December 23, 1963, 1; “Workers Spend Xmas in Jail,” The Student Voice, December 30, 1963, 1; Forman, The Making of Black Revolutionaries, 360–61; and King, Freedom Song, 186.

34. Carawan, Guy, Carawan, Candie, and Bond, Julian, Sing for Freedom: The Story of the Civil Rights Movement through Songs (Montgomery: New South Books, 2008)Google Scholar, 124; and Lefever, Harry, Undaunted By the Fight: Spelman College and the Civil Rights Movement, 1957–1967 (Macon: Mercer University Press, 2005): 172–75Google Scholar.

35. “Agreement Reached with Dobbs Houses,” The Student Voice, January 14, 1963, 3. “James Forman editorial,” March 6, 1964, Forman Papers, Container 33, Forman Papers, Container 33, Folder Atlanta, 1963–1964. See, generally, Forman Papers, Container 19, Folder SNCC Correspondence, January 1964.

36. In 1964, activists cringed that there were 14,000 black students cramped into Atlanta's six segregated high schools, while 18,000 white students enjoyed the city's other eighteen high schools. More than 5,000 black elementary students in Atlanta were schooled in double sessions, yet fewer than 100 white elementary students in the city endured a double session. “Atlanta: Protests and Progress,” March 27, 1964, Paschall Papers, Series 1, Box 6, Folder 1.

37. “Now Is The Time for Action,” January 1964, SNCC Papers, reel 19, frame 105.

38. Grady-Willis, Challenging U.S. Apartheid, 44.

39. Harmon, Beneath the Image of the Civil Rights Movement, 156–57.

40. Grady-Willis, Challenging U.S. Apartheid, 44.

41. “Action of Students Tuesday Deplorable,” Atlanta Daily World, January 8, 1964, 3.

42. Interview with Ed Nakawatase, Charlottesville, VA (December 7, 2006).

43. Grady-Willis, Challenging U.S. Apartheid, 46.

44. Claude Sitton, “Negroes Resume Atlanta Sit-Ins after Sidewalk Clash with Klan,” New York Times, January 20, 1964, 15; “Student Affidavits,” Paschall Papers, Series 4, Box 25, Folder 2.

45. See “17 Civil Rights Members Jailed in Georgia,” Daily (Kingston) Gleaner, December 23, 1964, 12; “73 Arrested After Klan Sparks Fight,” The (Toronto) Globe and Mail, January 20, 1964; “Klan's Cold Feet,” The Indian (Bombay) Express, January 20, 1964, 5.

46. The U.N. GA had charged the Sub-Commission to draft an international convention, and the Sub-Commission began its work on ICERD on January 13, 1964. The U.N. instructed all Sub-Commission members to act in their own personal capacity, and accordingly, Sub-Commission members were prohibited from making official pronouncements on behalf of their countries. Nonetheless, the Sub-Commission's recognition of personal autonomy operated as a fiction in many instances, as the Sub-Commission was composed of racial “experts” appointed by their respective national governments. Lerner, The U.N. Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, 1–4.

47. See Bell, Derrick Jr., “Brown v. Board of Education and the Interest-Convergence Dilemma,” Harvard Law Review 93 (1980): 518Google Scholar; and Dudziak, Mary, “Desegregation as a Cold War Imperative,” Stanford Law Review 41 (1988): 61Google Scholar.

48. “Interview of Mayor Ivan Allen,” July 30, 1991, Gary Pomerantz Papers, MARBL, Series 1, Box 1, Folder 8 (hereafter Pomerantz Papers); “Interview of Leroy Johnson,” September 12, 1994, Pomerantz Papers, Series 1, Box 4, Folder 9; “Interview of Leroy Johnson,” n.d., Pomerantz Papers, Series 1, Box 4, Folder 10; and “Biography,” n.d., Morris Abram Papers, MARBL, Box 22, Folder 12 (hereafter Abram Papers).

49. See Mary Dudziak, “Birmingham, Addis Ababa, and the Image of America: The International Influence of U.S. Civil Rights Politics in the Kennedy Administration,” in Plummer, Window on Freedom, 181–83.

50. “Transcript, Morris Abram Oral History Interview II,” March 3, 1984, Lyndon Baynes Johnson Library (hereafter Abram Oral History).

51. Abram, Morris, The Day is Short: An Autobiography (New York: Harcourt, 1982), 150–51Google Scholar.

52. In a 1993 interview, Abram recalled, “I was serving in the Subcommission for the Prevention of Discrimination and the Protection of Minorities of the United Nations, and I was hearing so much static about what a terrible country we had and how dreadfully blacks were treated, and Atlanta was sort of a model.” He maintained, “It hadn't been desegregated, but it was a model in terms of black voting, decent courts, fine universities, beautiful homes, and black prosperity.” Abram Oral History, 6. The United States State Department's guidance paper to Abram for the Sub-Commission's 1964 session declared, “On the development of text, coverage should be limited to basic rights and the approach should be along the lines of the ‘equal protection’ concept in our 14th Amendment.” The guidance paper also stated, “Provisions in line with the US Constitution and law should be supported on their merits. It can be pointed out that our Constitution is consistent with the Universal Declaration, which has been generally accepted as an international norm.” “Guidance Paper, Draft Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination,” January 7, 1964, Abram Papers, Box 94, Folder 3.

53. Guidance Paper, Draft Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, see above, note 52.

54. Declaration on the Elimination of All Forms on Racial Discrimination, art. 9.

55. Ivanov's scathing comments did not stop there, “Indeed, if the Sub-Commission failed to take any action against racist propaganda, it would be guilty of abetting it. Such propaganda, if fostered at the Government level, could lead to a situation as terrible as that which the world had witnessed in the days of Nazi Germany, and it must be banned.” Ivanov maintained, “Some countries allowed fascist and racist meetings and demonstrations to take place on the grounds that to ban them would be a restriction of the freedom of the inhabitants, but allowing those vile doctrines to be propagated could not be called freedom.” Sub-Commission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities, Summary Record of the Four Hundredth Meeting, E/CN.4/Sub.2/SR.400.

56. Abram confided in his close friend, Robert Thompson, “I must tell you frankly that I had quite a donnybrook with my Soviet counterpart and I am sure that he and I will continue to have very strong differences of opinion.” Abram then began to strategize ways he could promote the foreign policy interests of the United States during future Sub-Commission debates. “Letter from Morris Abram to Robert Thompson,” February 6, 1963, Robert Thompson Papers, Woodruff Library, Atlanta University Center, Series 7, Box 63, Folder 3.

57. See “Letter from Harlan Cleveland to Dean Rusk,” October 16, 1963, Berl Bernhard Papers, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library, Series 1, Box 16, Folder –United Nations General GA Committee.

58. “Letter from John Means to Morris Abram,” March 15, 1965, Abram Papers, Box 94, Unnamed Folder; Guidance Paper, Draft Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, see above, note 52.

59. “Statement of Morris B. Abram before Sub-Commission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities,” January 13, 1964, Abram Papers, Box 94, Folder 9; Sub-Commission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities, Summary Record of the Four Hundred And Twenty-Fifth Meeting, U.N. Doc. E/CN.4/Sub.2/L.408.

60. Guidance Paper, Draft Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, see above, note 52.

61. Ibid; Sub-Commission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities, Summary Record of the Four Hundred And Twenty-Fifth Meeting, U.N. Doc. E/CN.4/Sub.2/L.408 and U.N. Doc. E/CN.4/Sub.2/SR.409.

62. “Statement by Morris B. Abram, United States Expert Member of the Subcommission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities, on the Draft International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination,” January 22, 1964, Abram Papers, Box 94, Folder 9. The United States position was that “while ‘promotion’ [of racist propaganda] by state authorities may be prohibited, ‘promotion’ by private individuals may not be prohibited consistent.” Ibid. See also “U.S. Position on Articles Adopted by the Commission at Its 1964 Session and on U.S. Proposal for Additional Article on Anti-Semitism and Soviet Amendment to that Proposal,” May 12, 1964, Abram Papers, Box 94, Folder 9; and Statement by Morris B. Abram, United States Expert Member of the Subcommission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities, on the Subcommission's visit to Atlanta.

63. “Letter from Morris Abram to Richard Gardner,” January 23, 1964, Abram Papers, Box 94, Folder 9.

64. “Letter from Harlan Cleveland to Morris Abram,” November 28, 1962, Abram Papers, Box 94, Folder 8.

65. “Letter from Morris Abram to Richard Gardner,” see above, note 63.

66. Louis B. Fleming, “U.N. Critics of South to See Atlanta,” Los Angeles Times, January 23, 1964, 1.

67. Louis B. Fleming, “U.N. Critics of South to See Atlanta,” Washington Post, January 23, 1964, A24; and B. Drummond Ayres Jr., “Commission on Racial Discrimination Impressed by Negro Student Protest,” Washington Post, January 28, 1964, A2.

68. Sitton, “Negroes Resume Atlanta Sit-Ins after Sidewalk Clash with Klan,” 15; see also Kathleen Teltsch, “Pact to Ban Bias Proposed in U.N.,” New York Times, January 14, 1964, 7.

69. “Abram Asks World Ban Against All Racial Bias,” Atlanta Constitution, January 14, 1964, 2; “Abram Will Bring U.N. Board on Bias to Atlanta Friday,” Atlanta Constitution, January 23, 1964, 5; Eugene Patterson, “To Atlanta's U.N. Visitors,” Atlanta Constitution, January 25, 1964, 4; and “U.N. Board Arrives to Examine Bias,” Atlanta Constitution, January 25, 1964, 3.

70. “Letter from Morris Abram to Richard Gardner,” see above, note 63.

71. Baskt, “Atlanta,” 1.

72. Abram wrote to one of his colleagues, “This week-end I am taking, a U.N. Sub-Commission group, on which I sit, to Atlanta, Georgia for a visit and have, therefore, been talking to Negro leaders in the South. Through these conversations, I have become concerned about the problem in Birmingham which is smoldering and can easily erupt in a serious form without notice. …I am sure that the last thing any of us would want prior to November 1964 is for the President to face the choice of whether or not to send troops into Birmingham.” “Letter from Morris Abram to William D. Moyers,” January 22, 1964, Abram Papers, Box 32, Folder 11. “While no one will pretend Atlanta is the same as Jackson, Mississippi, too often the outside world knows little of the differences.” “Letter from Morris Abram to Richard Gardner,” see above, note 63.

73. While the State Department endorsed the Sub-Commission's Atlanta visit, the trip was privately financed. “Statement by Morris B. Abram, United States Expert Member of the United Nations Subcommission on the Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities, on the Subcommission's visit to Atlanta,” January 1964, Abram Papers, Box 94, Folder 9.

74. “Letter from Morris Abram to Honorable Jose D. Ingles,” December 4, 1962, Abram Papers, Box 94, Folder 8. But also, see Brown-Nagin, Courage to Dissent, 59. Brown-Nagin, citing a 1959 United States Civil Rights Commission hearing held in Atlanta, depicts the city's housing stock for blacks otherwise. She writes that at the turn of the decade, “African Americans made up more than a third of Atlanta's population, but were ‘compressed’ into less than one-sixth of the city's developed residential areas. Many blacks lived in overcrowded, dilapidated homes, amid squalid conditions.”

75. “Letter from Morris Abram to Honorable Jose D. Ingles,” December 4, 1962, Abram Papers, Box 94, Folder 8.

76. Ibid.

77. See generally Curry Papers, Series 3, Box 9, Folder 10; Forman Papers, Container 33, Folder Atlanta 1961–1962; Pomerantz Papers, Series 1, Box, 5, Folder 7.

78. “Letter from Robert Thompson to Morris Abram,” February 4, 1963, Abram Papers, Box 94, Folder 8. Thompson wrote Abram, “As much as I would love to see you and the U.N. groups come to Atlanta to view racial amity, I think the hotel situation and the Peyton Road barriers would be most embarrassing to you, Atlanta and America.” Thompson also asserted that the “closing of Peyton Road …is considered as a ‘Berlin Wall’ which we all are ashamed. So, until the Alderman Board recinds [sic] its action, by ordering the barriers along Peyton Road taken down, I think that you would be embarrassed.” Ibid. In 1963, the Fulton County Superior Court ordered the wall to be taken down, but well before the court order, even white moderates in Atlanta, recognizing the Cold War implications of the barriers, called for the wall to come down. In a 1962 editorial, Ralph McGill, publisher of the Atlanta Constitution, wrote, “The Chinese once labored for decades to build a wall to keep out invaders. France built the Maginot Line to restrict the Germans. The Communists built the Berlin wall. The Atlantans who erected the wooden screen have done themselves, their city, and their country a great deal of harm.” Ralph McGill, “The Folly of Barriers,” Atlanta Constitution, January 27, 1962. See, generally, Abram Papers, Box 63, Folder 3.

79. “Morris Berthold Abram, FBI Special Inquiry,” March 2, 1965, Abram Papers, Box 80, Folder 6; “Letter from Morris Abram to Richard Gardner,” see above, note 63.

80. B. Drummond Ayres Jr., “Klan, Marchers Keep Atlanta Tense,” Washington Post, January 25, 1964, A2; Sitton, “Negroes Resume Atlanta Sit-Ins after Sidewalk Clash with Klan,” 15.

81. Baskt, “Atlanta,” 4.

82. Forman, The Making of Black Revolutionaries, 361; “SNCC Backers Here Once Identified as Reds,” February 2, 1964, Forman Papers, Container 84, Folder FBI Files, 1963–65.

83. “United Nations Sub-Commission on the Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities,” January 24, 1964, SNCC Papers, reel 1, frame 31.

84. “Why We Protest,” January 24, 1964, Abram Papers, Box 94, Folder 9.

85. “Buttermilk Bottom,” January 1964, Abram Papers, Box 94, Folder 9.

86. “Letter from Morris Abram to Richard Gardner,” see above, note 63.

87. “Robert A. Thompson, Executive Director of the Atlanta Urban League, speaking to the United Nations Sub-Commission on the Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities at the Rivera Motel, in Atlanta, Georgia,” January 24, 1964, Good Papers, Georgia CD1.

88. Ibid., Paul Good, The Trouble I've Seen: White Journalist, Black Movement (Washington, DC: Howard University Press, 1975): 42–43.

89. B. Drummond Ayres Jr., Klan, “Atlanta Rights Pickets Welcome U.N. Visitors,” Washington Post, January 25, 1964, D12.

90. Ayres, “Commission on Racial Discrimination Impressed by Negro Student Protest,” A2.

91. “Mass Rally, The Face of Atlanta—Help Change It,” January 25, 1964, Abram Papers, Box 94, Folder 9.

92. Claude Sitton, “Negroes and Klansmen Clash in Atlanta as U.N. Group Visits City,” New York Times, January 26, 1964, 1; see also Grady-Willis, Challenging U.S. Apartheid, 46–47.

93. “Police Arrest 84 in Atlanta Bias Protest,” Chicago Tribune, January 27, 1964, 9. The 84 arrests described in the article headline refer arrests following Sunday's continued demonstrations. See also Claude Sitton, “Negroes and Klansmen Clash in Atlanta as U.N. Group Visits City,” New York Times, January 26, 1964, 1. The student activists astutely understood the contradiction of having black police officers patrol the downtown direct action campaign. In the leaflet entitled “Why We Protest,” SNCC asserted, “Atlanta has now assigned Negro policemen to supervise demonstrations and arrest demonstrators—but why is it only to watch over and arrest his brother that a Negro officer of the law is assigned downtown.” “Why We Protest.” see above, note 84.

94. “Letter from Morris Abram to Mr. and Mrs. Henry J. Toombs,” February 5, 1964, Abram Papers, Box 94, Folder 9.

95. “Letter from Morris Abram to Mr. and Mrs. Cecil A. Alexander,” January 28, 1964, Abram Papers, Box 94, Folder 9.

96. Ralph McGill, “For a Public Accommodations Law; Against This SNCC-Led Lawlessness,” Atlanta Constitution, January 21, 1964, 4.

97. “Chairman Sees Hope for Improvement of Relations in Georgia City After Visit,” Washington Post, January 27, 1964, A2; and “Hospitality Committee for the United Nations Delegations, Inc.,” January 1964, Abram Papers, Box 94, Folder 9. For a full list of the participants, see “Schedules,” January 1964, Abram Papers, Box 94, Folder 9.

98. “Letter from Morris Abram to Mrs. Geneva Haugabrooks,” February 5, 1964, Abram Papers, Box 94, Folder 9.

99. “Letter from Morris Abram to Honorable Ivan Allen, Jr.,” January 6, 1964, Abram Papers, Box 94, Folder 9; “Letter from Morris Abram to Honorable Ivan Allen, Jr.,” October 23, 1963, Abram Papers, Box 94, Folder 9; Abram Oral History, 7.

100. “Letter from Morris Abram to Richard Gardner,” see above, note 63.

101. “Letter from George Goodwin to Mary Misch,” January 31, 1964, Abram Papers, Box 94, Folder 9.

102. Claude Sitton, “6 in Atlanta Hurt in Racial Clashes,” New York Times, January 26, 1964, 1; “Progress Being Made in Atlanta,” Atlanta Daily World, January 28, 1964, 1; and Oswald Sykes, “Writer Calls Atlanta ‘Hell Hole of the South,’” Herald-Dispatch, January 28, 1964, 1.

103. “African Says U.S. Race Situation a Big Problem,” Los Angeles Times, January 27, 1964, 16.

104. “Behind the Façade of the Free World,” Pravda, March 4, 1964, 3 (citing James Williams, “Gregory Tells Judge Inmates were Drunk, Molested Girls,” Afro-American, February 8, 1964, 1). The Afro-American article detailed the SNCC activists' allegations that they not only faced brutality during arrests but also suffered indignities while in jail.

105. See above, note 97, A2.

106. See above, note 103.

107. Ayres, “Commission on Racial Discrimination Impressed by Negro Student Protest,” A2.

108. Good, The Trouble I've Seen, 42–43.

109. Ayres, “Commission on Racial Discrimination Impressed by Negro Student Protest,” A2.

110. “Demonstrators Jamming Atlanta's Jails,” Jet Magazine, February 13, 1964, 9.

111. “70 Arrested in Restaurant Incident,” The West African Pilot, January 28, 1964, 8; “100 Nabbed in Civil Rights March,” The West African Pilot, January 29, 1964, 2; and “86 People Held in U.S.,” The Uganda Argus, January 29, 1964, 1.

112. “Café Clash: 50 Held,” The Straits Times, January 28, 1964, 3.

113. “Overseas News in Brief—Arrested,” The Sydney Morning Herald, January 29, 1964, 3; “Negro Comic Held Again,” The Age, January 29, 1964, 20.

114. See, for example, “50 Arrested in Colour Bar Incident,” The Glasgow Herald, January 27, 1964, 1; “The Racial Problem in the United States, New Incidents in Atlanta,” Journal de Genève, January 28, 1964, 3; and “Blacks Arrested in the Southern USA,” Gazette de Lausanne, January 28, 1964, 8.

115. “Racial Clashes in Atlanta,” The Irish Times, January 27, 1964, 9.

116. “Racial Crisis Flares Anew in Atlanta,” The Windsor Star, January 27, 1964, 12; “Negro, Klansmen Picket,” The Calgary Herald, January 27, 1964, 1; “Violence Follows U.N. Group's Visit,” The Ottawa Citizen, January 27, 1964, 4.

117. “Atlanta Police Arrest 100 Anti-Segregation Demonstrators,” The Globe and Mail, January 28, 1964, 31. See also “Negro Invites Ku Klux Klan Demonstrators to Sing Along,” The Globe and Mail, January 27, 1964, 1; and “Racial Clashes Erupt at Café, 86 Arrested,” The Globe and Mail, January 27, 1964, 8.

118. “A New Phase of Racial Strife in America,” Prensa Latina, January 27, 1964, 1.

119. “Letter from John Means to Morris Abram,” see above, note 58.

120. Malcolm, X, “The Ballot or the Bullet,” in Malcolm X Speaks, ed. Breitman, George, (New York: Grove Press, 1994), 23Google Scholar. SNCC's Atlanta protests in the winter of 1964 were not the organization's first petitions to the U.N. Following the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church bombing, for example, SNCC wired U Thant, secretary-director of the U.N. GA, and charged the United States with violating Articles 55 and 56 of the U.N. Charter.

121. “Letter from Morris Abram to Richard Gardner,” see above, note 63.

122. The two Russians were Mr. Ivanov, U.N. Sub-Commission expert, and Mr. Ostrovsky, a Russian foreign service officer who assisted Ivanov with his English translations. “Letter from Boris Ivanov to Morris Abram,” December 10, 1963, Abram Papers, Box 94, Folder 9.

123. Abram, The Day is Short, 153.

124. Ibid.

125. Ibid., 152–53.

126. Abram Oral History, 6.

127. Abram, The Day is Short, 152–53.

128. Lerner, The U.N. Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, 5.

129. “Letter from Marie-Helene Lefaucheux to Morris Abram,” January 31, 1964, Abram Papers, Box 94, Folder 9.

130. Ibid.

131. See, for example, U.N. Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, General Recommendation No. XXV: Gender-Related Dimensions of Racial Discrimination (March 20, 2000), reprinted in Compilation of General Comments and General Recommendations Adopted by Human Rights Treaty Bodies, U.N. Doc. HRI/GEN/1/Rev.7 (May 12, 2004); Bond, Johanna E., “International Intersectionality: A Theoretical and Pragmatic Exploration of Women's International Human Rights Violations,” Emory Law Journal 52 (2003): 71Google Scholar; Powell, Catherine, and Lee, Jennifer H., “Recognizing the Interdependence of Rights in the Antidiscrimination Context Through the World Conference Against Racism,” Columbia Human Rights Law Review 34 (2002): 235Google Scholar; and Crooms, Lisa A., “Indivisible Rights and Intersectional Identities or, ‘What Do Women's Human Rights Have to Do with the Race Convention?’” Howard Law Journal 40 (1997): 619Google Scholar.

132. United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Gender Dimensions of Racial Discrimination (Geneva: United Nations, 2001)Google Scholar. This confusion about where women of color should seek legal redress has continued, in part, because in 1981, the U.N. began enforcement of the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women—another single-axis treaty.

133. The GA reviewed these rules, and through GA resolution 1296 of 1968, the GA established additional criteria for NGO participation. See also Arrangements for Consultation with Non-Governmental Organizations, U.N. ESCOR Res.1296 (XIIV), 1520th Plenary Meeting, http://www.globalpolicy.org/ngos/ngo-un/info/res-1296.htm (May 23, 1968).

134. See Peacock, James, Watson, Harry, and Matthews, Carrie, The American South in a Global World (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005)Google Scholar; and Mutua, Makua, “Savages, Victims, and Saviors: The Metaphor of Human Rights,” Harvard International Law Journal 42 (2001)Google Scholar: 201. It is admirable that Abram expanded the drafting process to include an informal dimension, where groups without consultative status could participate in shaping the Convention. Nonetheless, it is essential to interrogate Abram's motives for expanding participation in the drafting process.

135. See ICERD, art. 3. Article 3 declares, “States Parties particularly condemn racial segregation and apartheid and undertake to prevent, prohibit and eradicate all practices of this nature in territories under their jurisdiction.” Spirited and numerous debates within the U.N. left no doubt that the Sub-Commission's references to apartheid primarily concerned the repressive governmental practices that institutionalized Afrikaner supremacy in South Africa. Since 1946, the U.N. had passed a wide array of resolutions regarding racial conflict in South Africa resulting from the policies of government-sponsored racism. Most notably, the GA issued Resolution 1761 (XVII) in November 1962, which proclaimed that apartheid practices in South Africa violated the U.N. Charter, and requested that member states adopt a variety of diplomatic and trade sanctions to encourage the end of the apartheid regime in South Africa. See U.N. Res. 44 (I) (December 8, 1946); U.N. Res. 395 (V) (December 2, 1950); U.N. Res. 615 (VII) (December 5, 1952); U.N. Res. 1179 (XII) (November 26, 1957); U.N. Res. 1302 (XIII) (December 10, 1958); U.N. Res. 1460 (XIV) (December 10, 1959), U.N. Res. 1597 (XV) (April 13, 1961); U.N. Res 1662 (XVI) (November 28 1961); and U.N. Res. 1761 (XVII) (November 6, 1962).

136. Sub-Commission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities, Summary Record of the Four Hundred And Twenty-Fifth Meeting, E/CN.4/Sub.2/L.345.