Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924) was the prominent American scholar who served as president of Princeton University from 1902 to 1910, as governor of New Jersey from 1911 to 1913, and as the 28th president of the United States from 1913 to 1921. He was a Democrat. While Wilson's tenure is often noted for progressive achievement, his time in office was one of unprecedented regression in racial equality, with his presidency serving as the lowest point of the Nadir of American race relations.^[1]

Several historians have spotlighted examples in the public record of Wilson's racist policies and political appointments, such as the segregationists in his Cabinet.^[2][3][4] Other sources note Wilson defended segregation on "scientific" grounds in private, and describe him as a man who "loved to tell racist 'darky' jokes about black Americans."^{[5][6]: 103}

Thomas Woodrow Wilson was born and raised in the American South by parents who supported the Confederacy. His father, Joseph Wilson, supported slavery and served as a chaplain with the Confederate States Army.^[7] Wilson's father was one of the founders of the Southern Presbyterian Church in the United States (PCUS) after it split from the Northern Presbyterians in 1861 over the issue of secession. Joseph became a minister of the First Presbyterian Church in Augusta, and the family lived there until 1870.^[8]

While it is unclear whether the Wilsons ever owned slaves, the Presbyterian Church, as part of the compensation for his father's services as a pastor, provided slaves to attend to the Wilson family. According to Wilson, his earliest memory was of playing in his front yard as a three year old, hearing a passerby announce with disgust that Abraham Lincoln had been elected president, and that a war was coming.^[9][10]

Wilson was an apologist for slavery and the southern redemption movement; he was also one of the nation's foremost promoters of lost cause mythology.^[11] At Princeton, Wilson used his authority to actively discourage the admission of African Americans.^[1]

Prior to entering politics, Wilson was one of the most highly regarded academics in America. Wilson's published works and area of scholarship focused on American history. Though this fact received less attention both during and after Wilson's academic career, much of his writings are overtly sympathetic towards slavery, the confederacy and redeemer movements. One of Wilson's books, History of the American People, includes such observations and was used as source material for The Birth of a Nation, a 1915 film that portrayed the Ku Klux Klan as a benevolent force.^{[11]: 518–519} Quotes from Wilson's History of the American People used for the film include:

Adventurers swarmed out of the North, as much the enemies of one race as of the other, to cozen, beguile and use the negroes.... In the villages the negroes were the office holders, men who knew none of the uses of authority, except its insolences. [Ellipsis in the original.]

....The policy of the congressional leaders wrought...a veritable overthrow of civilization in the South.....in their determination to 'put the white South under the heel of the black South.' [Ellipses and underlining in the original.]

The white men were roused by a mere instinct of self-preservation.....until at last there had sprung into existence a great Ku Klux Klan, a veritable empire of the South, to protect the southern country. [Ellipsis in the original.]

However, Wilson had harsh words about the gap between the original goals of the KKK and what it evolved into.^[12]

Congressional Government, another highly regarded civic publication of Wilson's, includes a strong condemnation of Reconstruction era policies. Wilson refers to the time period as being characterized by "Congressional despotism", a time when both states' rights and the system of checks and balances were disregarded. Wilson specifically criticized efforts to protect voting rights for African Americans and rulings by federal judges against state courts that refused to empanel black jurors. According to Wilson, congressional leaders had acted out of idealism, displaying "blatant disregard of the child-like state of the Negro and natural order of life", thus endangering American democracy as a whole.^[13]

In his lengthy works on American history, Wilson did not cover the institution of slavery in great detail. However, when he did discuss the issue, his views were apologetic towards the institution, at least as it existed in the rural south during the Antebellum period. Wilson described himself as an opponent of both slavery and the Confederacy, though based solely on the grounds that neither would in the long term prove beneficial for the southern economy. The idea that holding another human being in bondage as chattel was inherently immoral is absent from any of the Wilson's discussion on the subject: on the contrary, Wilson described slavery as a benevolent state for Negros, whose white masters looked after their "comfort and welfare" and "meted out justice fairly".^[14] According to Wilson, domestic slaves received "affection and indulgence" from their masters. Though Wilson admits some masters could be neglectful, he maintained that by and large slave owners acted "responsibly and dutifully" towards their inherently "indolent" field slaves, "who often did not earn their keep".^[14]

Following a brief but highly praised stint as the Governor of New Jersey from 1910 to 1912, Wilson became the surprise Democratic nominee for president in 1912. The 1912 presidential election was unique; the Republican incumbent, William Howard Taft, narrowly secured his party's nomination after being challenged for it by former president Theodore Roosevelt. After this, Roosevelt decided he would run anyway and with his supporters formed the Progressive Party. In the fifty years prior, Democrats had won the presidency only twice; the split in the Republican Party made Wilson's candidacy far more viable than originally assumed.

After decades of loyal support, by 1912, many African Americans had grown disillusioned with the Republican Party and its record of failure on civil rights. This view was particularly true with regards to Taft, whose campaign barely acknowledged the black community, in part to avoid alienating southern whites, whom Taft mistakenly believed could finally be won over by a Republican candidate. At first, many prominent African Americans, including Booker T. Washington, lent their support instead to the Progressive Party candidate, Teddy Roosevelt. Roosevelt's own record towards the black community while in office was suspect, however. Roosevelt's standing with the black community, already vulnerable, was irreparably harmed after the Progressive Party endorsed segregation at their 1912 convention.^[25]

Though African Americans had increasingly been drawn into the ranks of Democratic Party supporters in regions where the party's Liberal wing was very strong, Wilson's candidacy was initially broadly dismissed out of hand. However, during the 1912 campaign, Wilson, to the surprise of many, appeared highly responsive to the concerns of the black community. In his correspondences with representatives of the black community, Wilson promised to answer their grievances if elected and made a point of promising to be "the President of all Americans". Wilson never expressly renounced his prior views on segregation and race relations, but many took his words and actions – such as receiving black leaders at his home on multiple occasions – as showing that he was a changed man.^[32]

Wilson's most active and prominent supporter from the black community in 1912 was scholar and activist W. E. B. Du Bois, who campaigned enthusiastically on Wilson's behalf. Du Bois endorsed Wilson as a "liberal Southerner", who would deal fairly with Negros^{[33][better source needed]} and whose economic plan would benefit all Americans. A seasoned political voice within the African American community, Du Bois was a co-founder of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), in addition to being the editor and chief of the organization's newspaper, The Crisis, which he used to attract Negro support to Wilson. By election day, Wilson had won over the support of many of the black community's most prominent and militant leaders, including William Monroe Trotter and Reverend John Milton Waldron, as well as leader of the National Colored Democratic League and Bishop of the African Zion Church, Alexander Walters.^[25]

Although elected to the presidency as the sitting governor of a northern state, Wilson showed himself to be very much a southern president in line with his upbringing. Wilson's first cabinet was predominantly composed of white Southerners, including those who, like the new president himself, were raised in the South before moving later in life.^[40] At the time, the South, which contained the only eleven states where Wilson won an outright majority of the vote in the 1912 presidential election, was politically dominated by the Democratic Party.^[41] In effect, Wilson's cabinet and administration was dominated by racists. A range of ideations was still present: Postmaster General Albert P. Burleson was devoted to institutionalized segregation; James Clark McReynolds, Wilson's first Attorney General, was a notorious personal though not so much political bigot; Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels was a violent white supremacist, counted among the leaders behind the Wilmington Massacre.^[42] Their effects would be felt throughout Wilson's presidency.^[43]

Segregating the federal bureaucracy

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Since the end of Reconstruction, the federal bureaucracy had been possibly the only career path where African Americans "witnessed some level of equity"^[58] and it was also the life blood and foundation of the black middle class.^[59][60]

Not only were African Americans almost completely excluded from higher level appointments, the Wilson cabinet was dominated by southerners, many of whom were unapologetic white supremacists.^[61] In Wilson's first month in office, Postmaster General Albert S. Burleson, a former Democratic congressman from Texas, urged the president to establish segregated government offices.^[4] Wilson did not adopt Burleson's proposal, but he did resolve to give his Cabinet Secretaries discretion to segregate their respective departments.^[62] By the end of 1913, many departments, including the Navy, Treasury, Commerce, and the Post Office, had segregated work spaces, restrooms, and cafeterias.^[4] 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.^[63] Since the overwhelming majority of black civilian employees of the federal government worked for either the Treasury, Department of Commerce (mainly for the statistics bureau) or the Postal Service, these measures had a devastating impact on the previously prosperous community of African American federal civil servants.^[64]

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. The Civil Service Commission claimed that the photograph requirement was implemented in order to prevent instances of applicant fraud, even though only 14 cases of impersonation or attempted impersonation in the application process had been uncovered by the commission the previous year.^[65]

As a federal enclave, Washington D.C. had long offered African Americans greater opportunities for employment and subjected them to less glaring discrimination. In 1919, black soldiers who returned to the city after they had completed their service in World War I, were outraged to find out that Jim Crow was now in effect; they could not return to the jobs which they had held prior to the war, with many of them noting that they could not even enter the same buildings which they used to work in. Booker T. Washington, who visited the capital to investigate claims that 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."^[66]

A 2021 study in the Quarterly Journal of Economics found that Wilson's segregation of the civil service increased the black–white earnings gap by 3.4–6.9 percentage points, as existing black civil servants were driven to lower-paid positions. Black civil servants who were exposed to Wilson's segregationist policies experienced a relative decline in home ownership rates, with suggestive evidence of lasting adverse effects for the descendants of those black civil servants.^[67]

The time period of Wilson's presidency (1913–1921), was the worst era of race-based violence in the United States since Reconstruction.^[94] In contrast to previous time periods, incidents were not largely confined to South. Between 1917 and 1921, hundreds of African-Americans were murdered in race riots, most of which took place outside of the former Confederacy.

In response to the demand for industrial labor, the Great Migration of African Americans out of the South surged in 1917 and 1918. Some attribute this migration as sparking race riots, including the East St. Louis riots of 1917. In response, but only after much public outcry and pressure, 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.^[95] 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", though he took no further action.^[96]

In 1919, another series of race riots occurred in Chicago; Omaha, Nebraska; Elaine, Arkansas; and two dozen other major cities across the North. Initially, the federal government once again refused to involve itself, despite appeals from both black and white statesmen.^[97] As the violence escalated however, the War Department intervened, deploying thousands of federal troops to areas experiencing unrest. Federal troops arrived after the worst of the violence had already occurred though they did take measures to restore order and prevent future outbreaks.^[98] No federal prosecutions were pursued against those who perpetrated the violence.

The extent, if any, that this second wave of violence and the failure of the federal government to adequately respond, can be attributed to the racial prejudices of Woodrow Wilson is unclear, but fairly weak. The underlying causes of the race riots of the late 1910s vary in specifics but are largely attributable to local labor and economic unrest, an area Wilson is usually considered to have been highly responsive towards.^[99] In all of these incidents, though the federal government failed to take corrective action, state and local authorities regularly exhibited clear malice towards the victimized black communities. Some point to the swift and decisive actions against the alleged perpetrators of the Houston Riot in 1917 as evidence Wilson could and would respond, depending on the race of those involved.^[100] However, the details of the Houston case meant the federal government automatically assumed jurisdiction through the UCMJ and evidence Wilson interfered in the case does not exist. Several major race riots, including the Tulsa Massacre, took place after Wilson left office and in spite of the Republican Harding administration's much firmer stance in support of the rights of African-Americans.^{[101][102][103]} Wilson was incapacitated by a stroke he suffered in late 1919 and for most of the next year his staff and cabinet acted without direction from the president and avoided taking decisive action or changes to policy. Despite his record of inaction, it is arguably a stretch to hold Wilson accountable for the spike in racial violence during this time considering his mental state and the still limited role expected of the presidency when it came to matters of local unrest.^[104][105] Even Wilson's consistent critics such as Du Bois declined to blame him outright, or limited the scope of their criticisms.

Wilson sat as chairman during the Paris Peace Conference; as both chairman and leader of the American delegation, Wilson wielded great power over the negotiations. Many of Wilson's proposals to safeguard world peace and democracy in the post war era, such as the League of Nations, were proving more popular outside of the United States than within. It soon became clear that convincing the U.S. Senate to ratify the likely peace terms would be an uphill battle.^[106]

The situation became more divisive when the delegation for the Empire of Japan, moved to include in the Charter of the League of Nations and the Treaty of Versailles, a declaration of racial equality. Japan had fought on the side of the allies and was the only non-white nation of the five major powers (the others being Britain, France, the United States and Italy). The first draft of the Racial Equality Amendment was presented to the Commission on February 13, 1919, and stated:

The equality of nations being a basic principle of the League of Nations, the High Contracting Parties agree to accord as soon as possible to all alien nationals of states, members of the League, equal and just treatment in every respect making no distinction, either in law or in fact, on account of their race or nationality.

Makino Nobuaki, of the Japanese delegation, argued that during the war, allied soldiers of different races came together and successfully fought side by side, creating "A common bond of sympathy and gratitude has been established to an extent never before experienced."^[107]

From its inception, the proposal proved to be immensely controversial; several newspapers in the United States immediately denounced it while Australian Prime Minister Billy Hughes (who opposed the proposal) announced at a meeting that "ninety-five out of one hundred Australians rejected the very idea of equality".^[108] The proposal was mostly symbolic in force, as the only change it required would be that signatories would have to treat each other's citizens equally, without regard to race. This did not mean countries could no longer ban or limit immigration from wherever they desired (though many took it to mean as much), but jurisdictions such as Australia, the United States and Canada would no longer be able to treat permanent residents as legally inferior based on Japanese ancestry. The British delegation, on behalf of Britain's dominions, voiced strong objections to the proposal, while the French, Italian and Greek delegations all expressed enthusiastic support.^[109] After protracted and heated debate, a final vote was called; from a quorum of 17, the Racial Equality Amendment secured 11 votes in favor, with no delegate from any nation voting no, though there were 6 abstentions, including all 4 from the British and American delegations. The proposal was unpopular with many White Americans (particularly those living in the West Coast), while the British were under heavy diplomatic pressure from Australia and South Africa, which maintained policies such as the White Australia policy but as dominions were unable to vote on the proposal.^{[citation needed]}

Wilson exercised his power as chairman and ruled the matter required a unanimous vote and therefore had failed. Wilson explained that this specific amendment was so divisive and extreme it must have unanimous support in order to pass. According to Naoko Shimazu, "Wilson perceived a great risk to the future of the League, should the racial equality issue become unmanageable by creating divisions in the plenary session. He tried to calm Japanese nerves by reiterating the importance of equality of nations in the League of Nations. Essentially, what Wilson managed to do through unanimity voting was to place the onus of rejecting the proposal on Britain."^[110]

Wilson's actions soured relations between the United States and Japan,^[111] weakening Japanese civilian opposition to Japan's increasing levels of militarism and an aggressive foreign policy.^[112]

Though Wilson aggressively championed the cause of self-determination for many stateless peoples of Eastern Europe, his sympathy did not extend to the "backward countries" of Asia and Africa, as Wilson's chief advisor in Paris, Colonel House referred to them.^[113] However, unlike the other major powers present, Wilson did not attempt to acquire or accept offers for colonial acquisitions as war spoils for the United States, carved from the defeated territories formerly controlled the Central Powers.^[114]

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.^[115] 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.^[116] The film, while revolutionary in its cinematic technique, glorified the Ku Klux Klan and portrayed black people 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. In his book, quoted in the film, he argued that the reason so many Southerners joined the Klan was desperation brought about by abusive Reconstruction-era governments.^[117] 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.^[6]: 104 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 that Wilson was not well aware of Dixon's views before the screening.^{[118][119][11]}

Though Wilson was not initially critical of the film, he increasingly distanced himself from it as a 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,^[120] and overcome attempts to block the film's release by claiming that Birth of a Nation was endorsed by the President.^[121] 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 stated that 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."^[122][123] Wilson issued this press release reluctantly, however, and under political pressure. Wilson did enjoy the film, and in private correspondence with Griffith, congratulated him on a "splendid production".^[124]

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."^{[125][126][11]}

Wilson briefly succumbed to the widespread prejudice expressed against some Eastern European and Southern European immigrants.^{[127][128][129]} In the last volume of A History of the American People, he wrote of them as coming out "of the lower class from the south of Italy and men of the meaner sort of Hungary and Poland, men out of the ranks where there was neither skill nor intelligence" and described the situation "as if the countries of the south of Europe were disburdening themselves of the more sordid and hapless elements of their population; and they came in numbers which increased from year to year".^[128] Nevertheless, neither Wilson the academic nor Wilson the politician seems to have harbored any genuine animus against these groups.^[129] Later on, after Wilson became president, his speeches revealed appreciation for the contributions of all European immigrants had made to the United States, as well as his belief that their arrival had invigorated American democracy and freedom.^[128][129] Wilson vetoed immigration restriction bills twice, saying that "some of the best stuff of America has come out of foreign lands, and some of the best stuff in America is in the men who are naturalized citizens of the United States".^[128][129] He consistently expressed the belief that all members of the white race could and should be integrated into American society as equals regardless of heritage.^[129] This was a recognition that Wilson never extended to black Americans.^[6]: 103

Wilson inherited the dilemma of how to best handle the colonies the United States had acquired after the Spanish–American War. Wilson granted Filipinos greater self-government and in 1916 signed the Jones Act, promising the Philippines independence in thirty years.^[130] In 1917, Wilson signed the Jones–Shafroth Act, granting greater self-government to Puerto Rico and granting statutory citizenship to Puerto Ricans.^[131]

Despite his disposition against a racial equality amendment binding on all conference participants, Wilson did insist that Poland and other eastern European countries (whose borders were carved out of the defeated empires of the Central Powers following the outcome of the war) ratify binding treaties obligating them to protect the rights of minorities, mainly Jews, within their own borders.^[132]

Further dispelling claims he harbored anti-Semitic prejudices, Wilson appointed the first Jewish American to the Supreme Court, Louis Brandeis.^[133] Wilson did so knowing that as both a Jew and a staunch progressive, Brandeis would be a divisive nominee who would face an uphill confirmation.^{[134][135][136]} Brandeis vividly contrasted with Wilson's first appointment, the openly racist and personally belligerent James McReynolds, who, prior to joining the court, had served as Wilson's first attorney general.^{[137][138][139]} On a personal level, McReynolds was widely seen by his peers as a mean-spirited bigot, whose disrespect was so extreme he was known to at times turn his chair around to face the wall when prominent African-American attorneys addressed the court during oral arguments.^[140][141] A fervent anti-Semite, McReynolds refused to sign opinions by any of his Jewish colleagues on the court.^[142][143]

Although Wilson appointed easily the most overtly intolerant judge in modern times (if not ever) in the form of McReynolds, his legacy to the Supreme Court was overall more favorable towards racial equality than not. While Brandeis and McReynolds were appointees who cancelled each other out ideologically, Wilson's third appointment to the bench, John Hessin Clarke, was a progressive who aligned himself closely with Brandeis and the Court's liberal wing. This point also requires context, however; whereas Brandeis and McReynolds served until 1939 and 1941 respectively, Clarke resigned from his lifetime appointment in 1922, after barely five years on the bench. Among his reasons for quitting, Clarke cited bullying from McReynolds as at least partial motivation.^[144][140] Though the Supreme Court handed down several major civil rights decisions during Wilson's presidency, it was rare for any of these rulings to be made by a narrow or vulnerable majority of the court; many, in fact, were unanimous, and it may have never been the case that the support of either or even both Brandeis and Clarke swung the verdict. In several instances, however, McReynolds was the leading and often lone dissenting opinion.^[140] Ultimately, McReynolds sat on the Court longer than any other Wilson appointee, being both the first and last Wilson nominee on the U.S. Supreme Court. Unlike his other prominent racist appointments, Wilson purportedly expressed remorse over McReynolds, allegedly calling his appointment his "greatest regret".^[145]

• Nadir of American race relations
• Civil rights movement (1896–1954)
• W.E.B. DuBois
• Racism in the United States
• Progressive Era
• Andrew Johnson and slavery