The U.S. government tried to reconcile the nation’s new image as a global beacon of morality and democracy with worldwide press coverage of its pervasive racism.48 In 1947, the Truman administration issued To Secure These Rights: The Report of the President’s Committee on Civil Rights, one of the most powerful indictments of racism ever to come from the U.S. government—a sign of progress in the midst of racism. But that same year, the NAACP offered the ninety-four-page An Appeal to the World: A Statement on the Denial of Human Rights to Minorities in the Case of Citizens of Negro Descent in
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