Interracial Activism in the Los Angeles Community Service Organization: Linking the World War II and Civil Rights Eras

2011 ◽  
Vol 80 (2) ◽  
pp. 231-267 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shana Bernstein
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Los Angeles ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Community Service ◽  
Early Years ◽  
Service Organization ◽  
World War ◽  
The World ◽  
Community Service Organization

Through the lens of the Community Service Organization (CSO), this article explores the emergence of Los Angeles ethno-racial communities' political activism and what enabled their success in a difficult Cold War climate. The CSO's creation in 1947, when it became the first enduring civil rights organization for the largest urban Mexican-origin population in the United States, is striking since historical narratives generally assume the Cold War crushed meaningful civil rights change. The CSO complicates this declensionist narrative. Its success stemmed in part from its reliance upon interracial networks that sustained it in its early years. The CSO reveals links between different racial and ethnic communities, in three different eras—the World War II, Cold War, and civil rights eras—that made the emergence and persistence of such activism possible.

scholarly journals The Tenacity of Popular Devotions in the Age of Vatican II: Learning from the Divine Mercy

Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 65
Author(s):  
Robert E. Alvis
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Vatican Ii ◽  
Second Vatican Council ◽  
Pope John Paul Ii ◽  
World War ◽  
Therapeutic Tool ◽  
Vatican Council ◽  
The World ◽  
Divine Mercy

Despite is global popularity in recent decades, the Divine Mercy devotion has received scant scrutiny from scholars. This article examines its historical development and evolving appeal, with an eye toward how this nuances our understanding of Catholic devotions in the “age of Vatican II.” The Divine Mercy first gained popularity during World War II and the early Cold War, an anxious era in which many Catholic devotions flourished. The Holy Office prohibited the active promotion of the Divine Mercy devotion in 1958, owing to a number of theological concerns. While often linked with the decline of Catholic devotional life generally, the Second Vatican Council helped set the stage for the eventual rehabilitation of the Divine Mercy devotion. The 1958 prohibition was finally lifted in 1978, and the Divine Mercy devotion has since gained a massive following around the world, benefiting in particular from the enthusiastic endorsement of Pope John Paul II. The testimonies of devotees reveal how the devotion’s appeal has changed over time. Originally understood as a method for escaping the torments of hell or purgatory, the devotion developed into a miraculous means to preserve life and, more recently, a therapeutic tool for various forms of malaise.

Dreams of Freedom, Temptations of Power

2019 ◽  
pp. 243-280
Author(s):  
Melvyn P. Leffler
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Cold War ◽  
National Security ◽  
Security Policy ◽  
September 11 ◽  
World War ◽  
Memory Culture ◽  
The World ◽  
September 11 Attacks ◽  
The Cold War

This chapter considers the end of the Cold War as well as its implications for the September 11 attacks in 2001, roughly a decade after the Cold War ended. While studying the Cold War, the chapter illustrates how memory and values as well as fear and power shaped the behavior of human agents. Throughout that struggle, the divergent lessons of World War II pulsated through policymaking circles in Moscow and Washington. Now, in the aftermath of 9/11, governments around the world drew upon the lessons they had learned from their divergent national experiences as those experiences had become embedded in their respective national memories. For policymakers in Washington, memories of the Cold War and dreams of human freedom tempted the use of excessive power with tragic consequences. Memory, culture, and values played a key role in shaping the evolution of U.S. national security policy.

scholarly journals From a Christian World Community to a Christian America: Ecumenical Protestant Internationalism as a Source of Christian Nationalist Renewal

Genealogy ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 30
Author(s):  
Mark Edwards
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Cold War ◽  
The United States ◽  
Culture Wars ◽  
World War ◽  
World Community ◽  
The World ◽  
The One ◽  
Intellectual Elites ◽  
Christian Nationalism

Christian nationalism in the United States has neither been singular nor stable. The country has seen several Christian nationalist ventures come and go throughout its history. Historians are currently busy documenting the plurality of Christian nationalisms, understanding them more as deliberate projects rather than as components of a suprahistorical secularization process. This essay joins in that work. Its focus is the World War II and early Cold War era, one of the heydays of Christian nationalist enthusiasm in America—and the one that shaped our ongoing culture wars between “evangelical” conservatives and “godless” liberals. One forgotten and admittedly paradoxical pathway to wartime Christian nationalism was the world ecumenical movement (“ecumenical” here meaning intra-Protestant). Protestant ecumenism curated the transformation of 1920s and 1930s Christian internationalism into wartime Christian Americanism. They involved many political and intellectual elites along the way. In pioneering many of the geopolitical concerns of Cold War evangelicals, ecumenical Protestants aided and abetted the Christian conservative ascendancy that wields power even into the present.

Blindness as Empathy: The Politics of Touch in Works by Dan Sterup-Hansen

2020 ◽  
pp. 205-228
Author(s):  
Karen Westphal Eriksen
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Cultural Trauma ◽  
Blind People ◽  
Left Wing ◽  
World War ◽  
Political Views ◽  
The World ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Phenomenological Perception

This article has as its topic the Danish artist Dan Sterup-Hansen (1918–1995) and his paintings and prints on the subject of blind people with canes as well as works related to these. Sterup-Hansen was active as an artist from a young to an old age, but made a significant artistic contribution in the decades following World War II. During this period, he explored a number of themes related to cold war anxiety and the cultural trauma of the World War II. These themes centre on the human body and a phenomenological perception of the world. They are humanitarian in spirit and are related to Sterup-Hansen’s left-wing political views of solidarity, humanism, and advocacy for change and reconstruction after the World War II.

Representing the Authentic from Japanese American Perspectives

2019 ◽  
pp. 276-316
Author(s):  
W. Anthony Sheppard
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Los Angeles ◽  
Japanese American ◽  
World War ◽  
Musical Life ◽  
Big Band ◽  
Musical Exoticism ◽  
Franz Waxman ◽  
The Cold War

This chapter explores the career of Japanese American composer and arranger Tak Shindo (1922–2002). Shindo grew up nisei in Los Angeles. Japanese American musical life is discussed with a focus on the community’s 1933 production of Sakura composed by Claude Lapham in the Hollywood Bowl. Interned at Manzanar during World War II, Shindo began musical studies through the camp’s programs. Although devoted to Latin jazz, he repeatedly served during the Cold War as a Japanese musical advisor for such Hollywood composers as Franz Waxman and Max Steiner (Sayonara, Cry for happy, and A majority of one). Several of his 1950s and 60s albums—combining elements of Japanese music with the big band style—were successful in the exotica genre. Shindo’s self-Orientalism is compared with the musical exoticism of Martin Denny. A brief discussion of subsequent Japanese American jazz follows. The chapter concludes with a profile of the composer Paul Chihara.

Howard Fast and the Refashioning of Postwar Protest

Prospects ◽  
2002 ◽  
Vol 27 ◽  
pp. 489-513
Author(s):  
Lily Phillips
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Cold War ◽  
The United States ◽  
National Narrative ◽  
World War ◽  
The Road ◽  
American Century ◽  
The World ◽  
The Cold War

The American Century began in 1945. In the Cold War national narrative that arose in the United States after World War II, America was the hero of the world, a glorious empire called to victory in the war and destined to help others along the road to the American Dream. This narrative advanced a tropology that anchored the construction of the United States as culturally supreme and morally preeminent. It was a nationalistic, self-congratulating celebration — and in the midst of it Howard Fast appeared, the ultimate “Party” crasher.

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