Picturing Black History

Photographs and stories that changed the world

A collaboration of and

Cold War

Five of the 21 American soldiers who refused to return to America at the end of the Korean War. The sign on the truck reads: "We Stay for Peace." They moved to China; by the 1960s, all but two had returned home.

Black Soldiers After the Korean War

Some Black soldiers chose not to go home after the war, remaining in North Korea and China—behind the “bamboo curtain”—to escape racism in the United States.

Claude Brown, author of Manchild in the Promised Land, testifies before the Senate subcommittee on Executive Reorganization on the conditions of black American ghettos.

Manchild in the Senate Hearing

Claude Brown testifies about the urban crisis in 1960s America.

American sprinters Tommie Smith and John Carlos raise their fists and give the Black Power Salute at the 1968 Olympic Games in Mexico City. The move was a symbolic protest against racism in the United States. Smith, the gold medal winner, and Carlos, the bronze medal winner, were subsequently suspended from their team for their actions.

The Black Fists Protest

How Black Olympians turned a 1968 Olympics Cold War triumph into a momentous Black protest symbol

Chinese Prime Minister Zhou En-lai congratulates American Civil Rights leader Robert Franklin Williams following the latter's speech, Peking, China, August 8, 1966.

Panthers and the Premier: Black Internationalism & Cold War China

From Robert F. Williams and Huey Newton to President Richard Nixon, three moments where Black Liberation movements converged, and diverged, with Revolutionary China.

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