I know that the USSR's constant highlighting of American institutional racism towards the Third World played a big role in the change of federal policy towards white subjugation of blacks in the South, but what was the popular conception of the United States like in relation to its racial climate in nations like Canada, Britain, France, etc., from post-Reconstruction to around 1968?

This is really broad, I know, but I wonder to what degree America was judged and viewed as horrifically backwards by the rest of the world in this time period. Was it anywhere near as bad as South Africa was viewed internationally until the 1990s?