ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the root causes for nuclear arms proliferation and its political and economic consequences for American society. The struggle for black Americans' civil rights since the end of World War II has occurred beneath the specter of nuclear war. Major civil rights leaders and black intellectuals—most prominently Paul Robeson, W. E. B. Du Bois, and Martin Luther King, Jr.—have spoken out against the nuclear arms race. More than any other segment of American society, black Americans are the chief victims of the nuclear arms race. With a clear head start in nuclear weapons development, by 1964 the United States held the capacity to completely destroy Soviet society. The sheer insanity of the nuclear and conventional arms race with the Soviet Union has culminated into a massive disarmament movement with widespread public support. During the late 1960s and 1970s, the Soviets strained their domestic economy in order to close the arms gap with the US.
