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| “ | 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, leading the United States in World War I and building the League of Nations, Wilson was a vehement believer in white supremacy, promoted the ideologies of the Ku Klux Klan and oversaw the resegregation of the federal government.
Biography
Woodrow Wilson was born in Staunton, Virginia in 1856. He grew up in Augusta, Georgia, during the Civil War and Reconstruction eras. As a child, he saw his mother nursing Confederate soldiers. One of his earliest memories include 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. 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. He died in 1924.
Villainy
- Wilson promoted racial segregation 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.
- 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 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 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 proposed the Espionage Act, eventually signing it into law in 1917, criminalizing opposition to World War I.
- Although he spoke out in favor of the 19th Amendment, he initially opposed giving women the right to vote. He reluctantly supported women's suffrage to protect the Democratic Party's reputation.
- 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 the war was ending.
- 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.