Woodrow Wilson and race

Background

Wilson was born and raised in the American South by parents who were committed supporters of the Confederacy. Woodrow's father, Joseph Wilson was a supporter of slavery who served as a chaplain for the Confederate army. While it is unclear if the Wilsons ever owned slaves of their own, during Woodrow's childhood the family was attended to by slaves provided by the Presbyterian Church where Joseph Wilson was a pastor. Wilson was an apologist for slavery and the southern redemption movement; additionally he was one of the nation’s foremost promoters of lost cause mythology.

Wilson was the first Southerner to be elected president since Zachary Taylor in 1848 as well as the only former subject of the Confederacy. Wilson's ascension to the presidency was celebrated by southern segregationists. At Princeton, Wilson used his authority to actively dissuade the admission of African-Americans. Several historians have spotlighted consistent examples in the public record of Wilson's overtly racist policies and political appointments, such as segregationists he placed in his Cabinet. Other sources claim Wilson defended segregation on ”scientific“ grounds in private and describe him as a man who “loved to tell racist 'darky' jokes about black Americans.”

Exclusion of African-Americans from Administration Appointments

By the 1910s, African-Americans had become effectively shut out of elected office. Obtaining an executive appointment to a position within the federal bureaucracy was usually the only option for African-American statesmen. It has been claimed Wilson continued to appoint African-Americans to positions that had traditionally been filled by blacks, overcoming opposition from many southern senators. Such claims deflect most of the truth however. Since the end of Reconstruction, both parties recognized certain appointments as unofficially reserved for qualified African-Americans. Wilson appointed a total of nine African-Americans to prominent positions in the federal bureaucracy, eight of whom were Republican carry-overs. For comparison, President Taft was met with disdain and outrage from both white Republicans and African-American leaders for appointing "a mere thirty-one black officeholders", a record low for a Republican. Upon taking office, Wilson fired all but two of the seventeen black supervisors in the federal bureaucracy appointed by Taft. Wilson flatly refused to even consider African-Americans for appointments in the South. Since 1863, the U.S. mission to Haiti and Santo Domingo was almost always led by an African-American diplomat regardless of what party the sitting President belonged to; Wilson ended this half century old tradition, though he did continue appointing black diplomats to head the U.S. mission to Liberia.

Segregating the Federal Bureaucracy

Since the end of Reconstruction, the federal bureaucracy had been possibly the only career path where African-Americans “witnessed some level of equity” and was the life blood and foundation of the black middle-class. Wilson's administration escalated the discriminatory hiring policies and segregation of government offices that had begun under President Theodore Roosevelt, and had continued under President Taft. In Wilson's first month in office, Postmaster General Albert S. Burleson urged the president to establish segregated government offices. Wilson did not adopt Burleson's proposal, but he did allow Cabinet Secretaries discretion to segregate their respective departments. By the end of 1913, many departments, including the Navy, Treasury and UPS, had segregated work spaces, restrooms, and cafeterias. Many agencies used segregation as a pretext to adopt whites-only employment policies on the basis that they lacked facilities for black employees; in these instances, African-Americans employed prior to the Wilson administration were either offered early retirement, transferred or fired.

Discrimination in the federal hiring process increased even further after 1914, when the Civil Service Commission instituted a new policy, requiring job applicants to submit a photo with their application.

As a federal enclave, Washington D.C. had long offered African-Americans greater opportunities for employment and less glaring discrimination. In 1919, black soldiers returning to the city after serving in WWI, were outraged to find Jim Crow now in effect; told they could not return to jobs they held prior to the war, with many noting they couldn’t even enter the same buildings they used to work in. Booker T. Washington, visited the capital to investigate claims African-Americans had been virtually shut out of the city's bureaucracy, described the situation: “(I) had never seen the colored people so discouraged and bitter as they are at the present time.”

Reaction of Prominent African-Americans

In 1912, despite his southern roots and record at Princeton, Wilson became the first Democrat to receive widespread support from the African American community in a presidential election. Wilson's African-American supporters, many of whom had crossed party lines to vote for him in 1912, were bitterly disappointed and protested these changes. Wilson defended his administration's segregation policy in a July 1913 letter responding to civil rights activist Oswald Garrison Villard, arguing that segregation removed "friction" between the races. W.E.B. DuBois, who actively campaigned for Wilson in 1912, wrote a scathing editorial in 1914 attacking him for allowing the dismissal of African-American federal workers based on their race and failing to keep his campaign promises to the black community.

African-Americans in the Armed Forces

World War I draft card, the lower left corner to be removed by men of African background to help keep the military segregated

Further information: Racial segregation in the United States Armed Forces

While segregation had been present in the army prior to Wilson, its severity increased significantly following his election. During Wilson's first term, the army and navy refused to commission new black officers. Black officers already serving experienced increased discrimination and were often forced out or discharged on dubious grounds. Following the entry of the U.S. into WWI, the War Department drafted hundreds of thousands of blacks into the army, draftees were paid equally regardless of race. Commissioning of African-Americans officers resumed but units remained segregated and most all-black units were led by white officers.

Unlike the army, the U.S. Navy was never formally segregated. Following Wilson’s appointment of Josephus Daniels as Secretary of the Navy, a system of Jim Crow was swiftly implemented; with ships, training facilities, restrooms, and cafeterias all becoming segregated. While Daniels significantly expanded opportunities for advancement and training available to white sailors, by the time the U.S. entered WWI, African-American sailors had been relegated almost entirely to mess and custodial duties, often assigned to act as servants for white officers.

Response to Race Riots and Lynchings

In response to the demand for industrial labor, the Great Migration of African Americans out of the South surged in 1917 and 1918. This migration sparked race riots, including the East St. Louis riots of 1917. In response to these riots, but only after much public outcry, Wilson asked Attorney General Thomas Watt Gregory if the federal government could intervene to "check these disgraceful outrages." However, on the advice of Gregory, Wilson did not take direct action against the riots. In 1918, Wilson spoke out against lynchings, stating, "I say plainly that every American who takes part in the action of mob or gives it any sort of continence is no true son of this great democracy but its betrayer, and ...[discredits] her by that single disloyalty to her standards of law and of rights." In 1919, another series of race riots occurred in Chicago, Omaha, and two dozen other major cities in the North. The federal government did not become involved, just as it had not become involved previously.

White House Screening of The Birth of a Nation

Main article: The Birth of a Nation § White House showing

Misleading quotation from Woodrow Wilson's History of the American People as reproduced in the film The Birth of a Nation.

During Wilson's presidency, D. W. Griffith's film The Birth of a Nation (1915) was the first motion picture to be screened in the White House. Wilson agreed to screen the film at the urging of Thomas Dixon Jr., a Johns Hopkins classmate who wrote the book on which The Birth of a Nation was based. The film, while revolutionary in its cinematic technique, glorified the Ku Klux Klan and portrayed blacks as uncouth and uncivilized.

Wilson and only Wilson is quoted (three times) in the film as a scholar of American history. Wilson made no protest over the misquotation of his words. According to some historians, after seeing the film Wilson felt Dixon had misrepresented his views, however. Wilson was personally opposed to the Ku Klux Klan; in his book quoted from in the movie, he argued the reason so many Southerners joined the Klan was desperation brought about by abusive Reconstruction era governments. In terms of Reconstruction, Wilson held the common southern view that the South was demoralized by northern carpetbaggers and that overreach on the part of the Radical Republicans justified extreme measures to reassert democratic, white majority control of Southern state governments. Dixon has been described as a “professional racist”, who used both his pen and pulpit (as a Baptist minister) to promote white supremacy and it is highly unlikely Wilson wasn’t well aware of Dixon’s views before the screening.

Though Wilson was not initially critical of the film, he increasingly distanced himself from it as public backlash began to mount. The White House screening was initially used to promote the film. Dixon was able to attract prominent figures for other screenings and overcome attempts to block the movie‘s release by claiming Birth of a Nation was endorsed by the President. Not until April 30, 1915, months after the White House screening, did Wilson release to the press a letter his chief of staff, Joseph Tumulty, had written on his behalf to a member of Congress who had objected to the screening. The letter states Wilson had been "unaware of the character of the play before it was presented and has at no time expressed his approbation of it. Its exhibition at the White House was a courtesy extended to an old acquaintance."

Historians have generally concluded that Wilson probably said that The Birth of a Nation was like "writing history with lightning", but reject the allegation that Wilson remarked, "My only regret is that it is all so terribly true."

Views on White immigrants and other minorities

Wilson purportedly lamented the contamination of American bloodlines by the "sordid and hapless elements" coming from southern and eastern Europe.

Despite claims he harbored anti-Semitic prejudices, Wilson appointed the first Jewish-American to the Surpeme Court, Louis Brandeis. Wilson did so knowing as both a Jew and staunch progressive, Brandeis would be a divisive nominee who’d face an uphill confirmation. Brandeis couldn’t have contrasted more with Wilson’s first appointment, the openly bigoted James McReynolds, who prior to joining the court served as Wilson’s first Attorney General. McReynolds disrespect was so extreme that he’d turn his chair around to face the wall when prominent African-American attorneys addressed the court. Unlike his other racist appointments, Wilson purportedly expressed remorse over his McReynolds' nomination, allegedly calling it his "greatest regret."

Assessment and Legacy

Ross Kennedy writes that Wilson's support of segregation complied with predominant public opinion. A. Scott Berg argues Wilson accepted segregation as part of a policy to "promote racial progress... by shocking the social system as little as possible." The ultimate result of this policy would be an unprecedented expansion of segregation within the federal bureaucracy; with fewer opportunities for employment and promotion open to African-Americans than before. Historian Kendrick Clements argues that "Wilson had none of the crude, vicious racism of James K. Vardaman or Benjamin R. Tillman, but he was insensitive to African-American feelings and aspirations."

In the wake of the Charleston church shooting, during a debate over the removal of Confederate monuments, some individuals demanded the removal of Wilson's name from institutions affiliated with Princeton due to his administration's segregation of government offices. On June 26, 2020, Princeton University removed Wilson's name from its public policy school due to his "racist thinking and policies." The Princeton University Board of Trustees voted to remove Wilson's name from the university's School of Public and International Affairs, changing the name to the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs. The Board also accelerated the retirement of the name of a soon-to-be-closed residential college, changing the name from Wilson College to First College. However, the Board did not change the name of the university's highest honor for an undergraduate alumnus or alumna, The Woodrow Wilson Award, because it is the result of a gift. The Board stated that when the university accepted that gift, it took on a legal obligation to name the prize for Wilson.

See Also

• Nadir of American Race Relations
• Civil rights movement (1896–1954)
• W.E.B. DuBois