Lovelace on "William Worthy's Passport" and more in June JAH

The June issue of the Journal of American History is now out. One article that is sure to interest many of our readers is "William Worthy's Passport: Travel Restrictions and the Cold War Struggle for Civil and Human Rights," by H. Timothy Lovelace, Jr. (University of Indiana Maurer School of Law). Here's the abstract:

In April 1964 Malcolm X boldly challenged black activists to “expand the civil rights struggle to the level of human rights” and “take the case of the black man in this country before the nations in the U.N.” But nearly two years earlier, William Worthy, black America’s star foreign correspondent, had taken his case before both U.S. courts and the United Nations. In 1961 Worthy defied the U.S. travel ban to Cuba to report on racial progress on the island. The State Department had the names of more than two hundred citizens who had violated the travel ban, but federal officials singled out the radical journalist for prosecution, making him the first American convicted of returning to the United States without a valid passport. H. Timothy Lovelace Jr. explores how Worthy invoked the U.S. Constitution and international human rights law to fight his selective prosecution and uses Worthy v. United States to offer fresh understandings of black internationalism in the 1960s.

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