Editing Woodrow Wilson (section)

==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.<ref>[https://www.history.com/news/woodrow-wilson-racial-segregation-jim-crow-ku-klux-klan How Woodrow Wilson Tried to Reverse Black American Progress], ''History Channel''</ref>
** 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.<ref name = segregation></ref>
* 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.<ref name = Empire>[https://daily.jstor.org/woodrow-wilson-and-american-empire/ Woodrow Wilson and the American Empire], ''JSTOR Daily''</ref>
** 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.<ref name = Empire></ref><ref>[https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/haiti-us-occupation-hundred-year-anniversary The Long Legacy of the Occupation in Haiti], ''The New Yorker''</ref>
** 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.<ref name = Empire></ref>
* 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.<ref>[https://www.mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/1239/sedition-act-of-1918#:~:text=Under%20the%20act%2C%20it%20was,violation%20of%20the%20act%3B%20or Sedition Act of 1918 (1918)], ''The First Amendment Encyclopedia''</ref>
* 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.<ref>[https://fee.org/articles/the-palmer-raids-america-s-forgotten-reign-of-terror/ The Palmer Raids: America’s Forgotten Reign of Terror], Foundation for Economic Education</ref>
* 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]].