Woodrow Wilson

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Woodrow Wilson Full Name: Thomas Woodrow Wilson Alias: President Wilson Mr. Wilson The Professor The Phrasemaker Schoolmaster in Politics Origin: Staunton, Virginia, United States Occupation: President of the United States (1913–1921) Governor of New Jersey (1911–1913) President of Princeton University (1902–1910) Hobby: Watching The Birth of a Nation Goals: Resegregate the federal government (succeeded) Keep the United States out of World War I (failed) Defeat the Central Powers (succeeded) Prevent women from voting (failed) Crimes: Xenophobia Segregationism Homophobia Negrophobia Oppression Political corruption Abuse of power War crimes Misogyny Sexism Imperialism Unlawful imprisonment Hate Speech Racism Discrimination Authoritarianism Anti-Semitism Type of Villain: Racist President

“	The white men of the South were aroused by the mere instinct of self-preservation to rid themselves, by fair means or foul, of the intolerable burden of governments sustained by the votes of ignorant negroes and conducted in the interest of adventurers.	„
	~ Woodrow Wilson in his book, A History of the American People.

Thomas Woodrow Wilson (December 28, 1856 – February 3, 1924) was the 28th President of the United States from 1913 to 1921. Although he has been praised for his agenda such as progressive reforms, leading the United States to victory in World War I, making child labor illegal, and building the League of Nations, he was also a vehement believer in white supremacy, promoted the ideologies of the Ku Klux Klan, and oversaw the resegregation of the federal government.

Biography

Early life

Woodrow Wilson was born in Staunton, Virginia in 1856. He grew up in Augusta, Georgia, during the American Civil War and Reconstruction eras. As a child, he saw his mother nursing Confederate soldiers. One of his earliest memories was seeing Jefferson Davis marching through Augusta in chains following the South's defeat.

Wilson attended the College of New Jersey (now Princeton University), where he studied political philosophy and history. He earned his Ph.D at Johns Hopkins University. Wilson taught in colleges before becoming the President of Princeton University in 1902.

Ascension to power

He then ran for Governor of New Jersey in 1910 as a Democrat and won. He oversaw reform on a progressive platform during his governorship, gaining him national reputation that encouraged him to run for President in 1912. Running on a campaign of "The New Freedom", Woodrow Wilson defeated incumbent William Howard Taft and former President Theodore Roosevelt, becoming the 28th President of the United States. As president, he pursued an agenda of progressive reform, leading to the establishments of the Federal Reserve System and the Federal Trade Commission. His Revenue Act of 1913 lowered tariffs and began the modern income tax. Wilson also oversaw a policy of re-segregation within the federal government.

He was re-elected as President in 1916 on the basis that he would allow America to remain neutral in World War I, but after a series of unrestricted submarine warfare attacks from Germany, Wilson officially brought the United States to be involved in the war in April 1917.

Following the war, Wilson participated in peace negotiations at the Paris Peace Conference, creating the League of Nations to that end. Wilson intended to run for a third term as President, but his plan ended when he suffered a stroke in 1919, forcing him to skip Warren G. Harding's inauguration. Woodrow Wilson died in 1924 at age 67.

Villainy

• Wilson promoted racial segregation and Jim Crow laws and allowed the re-segregation of Black people from whites in the federal government, resulting in the separation and/or dismissal of Black federal workers throughout the United States.
  • He personally fired 15 out of 17 black supervisors in the federal service and replaced them with whites.
  • He refused to appoint black ambassadors to Haiti and Santa Domingo (now the Dominican Republic), which were customary posts for African-Americans.
  • Under his administration, the US Navy was segregated for the first time in history. Segregation in the army was also escalated to the point that very few black soldiers ever saw combat during his tenure.
  • Even worse, while running for President in 1912, he had promised justice and "fair dealing" for Black Americans.
  • His resegregation policies undoubtedly reversed the process of Reconstruction and the progress of integration of blacks and whites.
• He was a vocal defender of the Ku Klux Klan and their ideologies, often glorifying them in his writing.
• He invaded several Latin American countries during the Banana Wars, mainly for the interest of the U.S. economy and sphere of influence.
  • He began the U.S. occupation of Veracruz because the Mexican government refused to give a 21-gun salute to the U.S. flag as punishment for the Tampico Affair, even though they apologized and punished the Mexican forces involved.
  • He sent the United States Marines into Haiti, preventing Haitians from governing themselves and beginning the U.S. occupation of Haiti from 1915 to 1934, which was marked by numerous human rights abuses and killings of thousands of Haitians.
  • He sent the Marines to occupy the Dominican Republic as well, for financial control, and out of suspicion that Germany would influence the country. The subsequent occupation (1916-1924) led to great poverty and the spread of white supremacist ideologies in the Dominican Republic, as well as the creation of the Dominican National Guard, which gave way to Rafael Trujillo's rise to power.
• He proposed the Espionage Act, eventually signing it into law in 1917, criminalizing opposition to World War I.
• He also signed the Sedition Act, which made criticism of the government a crime punishable by imprisonment for up to 20 years.
• He downplayed the Spanish flu, never publicly acknowledging it in order to not lower morale in Americans while they were at war. He even contributed to the pandemic by continuing troop mobilization even as World War I was ending.
• He initially opposed giving women the right to vote. He arrested and jailed women's suffragettes, who went on hunger strikes and were force-fed in prison. He reluctantly supported women's suffrage and spoke out in favor of the 19th Amendment to protect the Democratic Party's reputation.
• He authorized the Palmer Raids, which not only targeted Italian and Eastern European Jewish immigrants for mass deportation, but also escalated anti-immigrant hysteria and the First Red Scare.
• He rejected the Racial Equality Proposal, a clause in the Treaty of Versailles proposed by Japan at the Paris Peace Conference, overturning a vote that would have approved it. The exclusion of the proposal led to Japan's resentment against the West and played a role in its rise of nationalism leading up to World War II.

Trivia

• He was a professor.
• He was president of Princeton from 1902 to 1910.
• His face can be found on the $100,000 bill.
• One of his childhood memories was the fact when he heard that Abraham Lincoln got elected in 1860.
• He was the last president to travel to the inauguration ceremony on carriage.
• He was the fifth president to be married twice.
• He was the only president to be buried in Washington D.C.
• He was the first president to travel to Europe while in office.
• Due to his stroke, he was the first president (since Andrew Johnson) to skip the inauguration of his successor, Warren G. Harding. The next two presidents were Richard Nixon and Donald Trump.
• His father served as a chaplain in the Confederate army and used his church as a hospital for injured troops.
• Despite being a villain, Wilson is ranked pretty highly by historians as he is currently ranked as the 13th best president the US has had overall.