“Vor den Augen der Ganzen Welt”: Transnational Teenage Political Cultures and the U.S. Civil Rights Movement Abroad

“Does this tragedy have to occur in the land of democracy before the eyes of the whole world?” asked a group of twenty-four West German boys between the ages of fourteen and fifteen from Munich, Germany during May of 1963.  In a typed, evocative letter, these German teenagers from Munich regarded racial segregation as a criminal offense and an affront to Christian values.  But the Munich youth were not alone, as letters from other cities in West Germany, Belgium, Japan, Switzerland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and Canada reached the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) office in Atlanta and political offices throughout the United States.  Foreign youth’s written testimonies attested to the global reach of television and print coverage as well as teens’ sharp attentiveness to and passionate engagement with events in the U.S.  Yet, how did political concepts and ideas travel around the world? 

By analyzing archival records of transnational exchanges, I argue that Martin Luther King, Jr.’s international presence, broad political influence, and idealistic vision appealed to youth across the globe and sparked conversations about politics, race relations, and culture in the United States and their home countries.  The American civil rights movement encouraged teenage writers and budding activists across the globe to review their national pasts critically; pasts that involved genocide, segregation, and injustice.  By examining their personal testimonies, I consider how teenagers and youth attempted to fashion political identities through international racial solidarity and social transformation.  Letter writing as a medium illustrated the way in which children and teenagers participated in and helped shape ideas about global citizenship, racial solidarity, and human rights—often times at the expense of the eroticization of the racial “other” or even teenagers discounting more complex trends of racism in their home countries.