The civil-rights movement in the United States was inextricable from this wider international context. When Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his iconic “I Have a Dream” speech in Washington, he was flanked by men wearing the distinctive boat-shaped “Gandhi caps,” popularized both by activists of the Indian National Congress (Gandhi’s party) and by freedom fighters in Ghana during their respective struggles against the British. Those paper hats were indicative of a larger truth; the campaign against segregation and Jim Crow was always embedded in a larger global battle against white supremacy. Beyond being a chapter in an American story, the civil-rights movement was another episode in the rebelling of colonized peoples around the world.

This was clear to black American communists like Harry Haywood as early as the 1930s. “The Negro question in the United States must be conceived as part of the national colonial problem,” he wrote, “or, in other words, it is part of the general worldwide problem of freedom of the oppressed and dependent peoples from the shackles of imperialism.”

But you didn’t need to be an ardent communist to sense that the liberation of black people in the United States was linked to struggles elsewhere. Anti-colonial efforts abroad, particularly in India, inspired Martin Luther King Jr. “While the Montgomery bus boycott was going on,” he wrote in 1959, “India’s Gandhi was the guiding light of our technique of nonviolent social change.” The reverend had come to know of Gandhi’s principles and writings through networks of Gandhians in the United States. In Gandhi’s moral commitment to nonviolence, King found both a powerful political tactic and an analogue for “Christian love,” a way to weaponize the highest virtue of his faith. “Christ showed us the way,” King said, “and Gandhi in India showed it could work.”

After the success of the Montgomery bus boycott, King travelled to Ghana in 1957 to attend the fledgling country’s independence ceremony and meet another disciple of Gandhi’s, Kwame Nkrumah. Nkrumah’s campaign of nonviolent civil disobedience had led to Ghana becoming the first sub-Saharan African nation to free itself from European colonialism; boycotts and other moves pressured the British to leave the Gold Coast. The visit crystallized in King’s mind the scale and possibilities of the struggle he was immersed in. “Both segregation in America and colonialism in Africa were based on the same thing,” he observed, “white supremacy and contempt for life.” While in Ghana, King met Richard Nixon, then the U.S. vice president, and told him flatly, “I want you to come visit us down in Alabama where we are seeking the same kind of freedom the Gold Coast is celebrating.” In a radio interview, King insisted that Ghana’s liberation offered tremendous hope. “The event, the birth of this nation, will give impetus to oppressed peoples all over the world,” he said. “I think it will have worldwide implications and repercussions—not only for Asia and Africa, but also for America. … It renews my conviction in the ultimate triumph of justice.”