Woodrow Wilson and Black People

L.Rosenbloom Social Studies teacher ^ | 08-03-03 | Mn. Black Republican Coalition

[Mn. Black Republican Coalition]

Woodrow Wilson and Black Ameircans Part 2, of our series on this President

[Ditto]

My pleasure. Good luck on your research. Let us know what you come up with.

[Clemenza]

You should read Wilson's letters to Colonel Edward Mandel House about Mexico. They made Stormfront look tame. Even in the context of his time, Wilson was one bigoted Crackah'.

[HuntsvilleTxVeteran]

The Ambassador to England before and during WWI was an outlaw of my family, Walter Page.
I have the books "The life and letters of Walter Page.
A lot of the letters are to and from President Wilson.
You might be able to get them through your library but if you can not, FReep mail me and I will mail them to you, if you promise to return them.
Before America was involved in WWI, Germany turned over it's keys to their Embassy to him.

[ohioWfan]

Will do. Thanks again!

[ohioWfan]

I'll see if I can find them in the library. Thanks for the reference, and the offer!

[x]

What's sad is how some Black leaders trusted Wilson to change things and improve conditions for their people, and were bitterly disappointed. Dubois eventually became a Communist and ended up in Ghana. You can't blame that on Wilson, but certainly an opportunity was missed in his day.

One reason why so many African-Americans cling to the Democrats now may be that party-changers aren't always rewarded by those they sign on with. Certainly not to the extent that they'd like to be, and in 1912, not at all.

In his history of the United States, Wilson also referred to Southern and Eastern European immigrants as the "sordid and hapless" elements of the population in the Old Country. It's hard to see how he could have been elected President if the Republican party weren't so badly split.

Of course it was a different time from today, but Wilson, as a man of high principle was more bigoted than a more flexible and practical politician would have been. The average politican knows not to offend people needlessly, and Wilson apparently didn't have any hesitation doing that. Apparently some groups, African-Americans in particular, didn't count in his world.

[an amused spectator]

"negative eugenics" & "positive eugenics"

Dang! Why I've always loved Free Republic. You learn something new every day. Thanx!

[kipita]

1997!

I'll take that complement (via simply searching yahoo/google using keywords) as a justification of my extreme intelligence or as a "welcome to the family" FR style greeting. Both work well for me (as I stick my chest out proudly and go for another beer)!

[an amused spectator]

One of the most famous protest delegations was led in 1914 by Monroe Trotter, a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Harvard and Boston newspaper editor. Wilson found Trotter’s manner “insulting” and dismissed the delegation.

One of the most famous nominations was submitted in 2005 by George W. Bush.

Dr. Condoleeza Rice, who earned her bachelor's degree in political science, cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa, from the University of Denver in 1974; her master's from the University of Notre Dame in 1975; and her Ph.D. from the Graduate School of International Studies at the University of Denver in 1981, and who is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and has been awarded honorary doctorates from Morehouse College in 1991, the University of Alabama in 1994, the University of Notre Dame in 1995, the National Defense University in 2002, the Mississippi College School of Law in 2003, the University of Louisville and Michigan State University in 2004, showed up in the United States Senate to supplicate herself for the favor of the assembled "rocket scientists" who populate the U.S. Senate.

Robert "Sheets" Byrd, leading Democrat, Alzheimer's victim and former KKKer, found Rice's manner “insulting” and dismissed her nomination.

[an amused spectator]

... a justification of my extreme intelligence or as a "welcome to the family" FR style greeting.

Both. I like your style. I'm going to go dispense with a beer, and "go for another", myself.

aas - FR media expert, and media gadfly, at your service. ;-)

[an amused spectator]

I knew of the relationship between the dubious Margaret Sanger, eugenics and birth control before I read your post on "positive" and "negative" eugenics.

Now you've actually forced me to do some real Net research on Sanger and my attitudes towards her, drat you! ;-)

Like your home page. Do you speak Spanish? One of my best friends is a Spanish-speaking prodigy, and another is a professional chemist. Dang! Small world. ;-)

[Susannah]

I have a copy of the 1990 edition of 'Don't Know Much About History' by Kenneth C. Davis. He's certainly a liberal and very unkind to Reagan and many conservatives, but he also points out how Wilson took us from the 'big stick' to the 'big brother'. He mentions Wilson's involvement in Latin America in a negative way (Nicarauga, Haiti, Dominican Republic, etc.)

Regarding Wilson's racism, this is a quote from the Davis book:

"The shame of Wilson's "progressive" administration was his abysmal record on civil rights. Under Wilson, Jim Crow became the policy of the U.S. government, with segregated offices, and blacks losing some of the few government jobs they held."

There is more interesting information in the book regarding Wilson's resistance to women voting. Only after Republicans gained control of Congress and states (Idaho and Colorado were among the first) started allowing women to vote and Wilson was eventually faced with women voting against him by a 2 to 1 margin....then Wilson gave in to the women who had protested him and endorsed the amendment.

Just a side note from the Davis book on something I didn't know about slavery: "by the time those first twenty Africans arrived in Jamestown aboard a Dutch slaver, a million or more black slaves had already been brought to the Spanish and Portugese colonies in the Carribbean and South America."

[Susannah]

Before America was involved in WWI, Germany turned over it's keys to their Embassy to him.

That's interesting! Especially since Wilson was re-elected with the Democratic campaign slogan "He kept us out of war!"

[HuntsvilleTxVeteran]

Even though President Wilson had selected Walter for his position, Walter was very pro England and Wilson referred to him as the England lover.
On the German keys, Walter opened the Germany Embassy once a week to help the Germans stranded by the war.

[rdf]

Thanks for the ping.

Here is a bit on the issue from the textbook for high school students that we wrote for the Declaration Foundation

---

The astonishing drop in voter registration in Louisiana [at the end of the 19th Century] is a sign of the conscious and systematic reimposition of race-conscious law in the whole country but especially in the South. As an example of their national extent, it is interesting to note that the public schools in the District of Columbia were integrated from the end of the Civil War up to the Democratic administration of Woodrow Wilson. Under President Wilson, the District of Columbia, which was and is largely run by Congress, was as segregated as Georgia.[5]

[footnote 5]

This parenthetical remark understates the re-segregation undertaken by the Wilson Administration. In 1913 a number of federal agencies were officially segregated, including the Post Office Department and the Bureau of the Census. Workers who complained were fired. President Wilson himself wrote the editor of a religious journal, the Congregationalist, in September of 1913, defending his actions: “I would say that I do approve of the segregation that is being attempted in several of the departments.” (Wilson to Rev. H.A. Bridgman, Sept. 8, 1913, cited in Woodrow Wilson and the Progressive Era, by Arthur S. Link.)

During these years, white labor found, or thought it found, a protection against black competition in laws that restricted blacks or segregated them in the workplace, requiring employers to construct separate entrances or separate toilet facilities, for example. Public schools and transportation were segregated, and black participation in the basic civic duties, not only voting, but also jury duty and public employment, were also sharply reduced, all by the power of state laws. The system of laws that produced this effect were termed the “Jim Crow” laws, named after a colloquial Southern expression for the black man.

FOR FURTHER READING AND RESEARCH

1) The more than fifty years from the triumph of Jim Crow to the successful modern Civil Rights movement offer a rich field for historical inquiry, but the details are too manifold for coverage in this book. We mentioned above the little-known fact that Democrat Woodrow Wilson oversaw, and approved, the de jure segregation of much of the federal government. Another Democrat, Harry S. Truman, made a dramatic move in the opposite direction, opening all the Armed Services of the United States to men of all races in 1948-9. Truman himself was moved by the sacrifice of black soldiers in the Second World War, and indignant at the treatment some of those men had received upon returning to their native land. Something of the same sentiment had moved the leaders of the Republican Party in the post bellum period. One wonders why there was not a similar sentiment after the First World War. The subject is discussed in, among other places, John Hope Franklin’s From Slavery to Freedom, chapters 24-5. Is the fact of military service, with the attendant risk of life for country, grounds or proof of aptness for citizenship?

---

Republican support for equal rights was not as strong in the early 20th Century as it had been in the 20 years after lincoln, but it was actual support, as against what Wilson and the Democrats did early in the Century. Calvin Coolidge was among the better GOP leaders in this regard.

Again, thanks for the ping.

Richard F.

[nicollo]

Wilson historians twist and squirm to excuse the old boy for his racism and his racist policies. They point to a letter from just after he left office about regretting not having done more for "those people." As if that changes things. In their minds it does.

Race in the Progressive Era is far more complicated than we can appreciate it today. It's within the generation of Plessy, and it's withing 2-3 generations of slavery itself. The Jack Johnsons, the DEB Dubois's hammered against the barriers. The Booker Washingtons, the G.W. Carvers, instead, pushed them back, patiently, moving them away rather than smashing them all at once. Was the one right, the other wrong? I think they're all part of the fight. I think that Washington was correct to brag of the incredible progress of a race that was only half a century before held in slavery. There are some amazing articles in the early 1910s on this economic advance in such a short period of time. For all the problems, there was, it is often forgotten, incredible progress.

The fight, ultimately, must be gauged by the outcome, and by its essence. What principles do we apply? Woodrow Wilson stood for Jim Crow. He loses in history, and there's no arguing. His vision was wrong, and it is dead. Dubois, so glorified, loses in his lifetime, yet triumphs, after all -- but for his goals and not for his process. Booker Washington, far more than Dubois, wins -- in his lifetime and today -- for his vision of self-reliance, of self-improvement, of independence and education of economic equality as essential to political and social equality proved correct in means and ends. The 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments ultimatel prevail, and due in no small part to the Republican party's upholding them as core principles through a period that pushed hardily against them..

The standard take on the Progressive Era Republicans is that they failed the emancipation. They are accused of that vile Nixon "Southern Strategy," a damning association for good company and high school textbooks. Of them, only Theodore Roosevelt is excused, for he invited Booker T. to the White House for lunch. Roosevelt, as ever, has a stupidly mixed record -- good on rhetoric, confused on product. As ever, McKinley is missunderstood. As ever Taft is fat, dumb and stupid -- and if you listened to the blowhards at last autumn's WW Conference, a racist fool.

Here for some good reads on all this:

Calvin Coolidge and Race: His Record in Dealing with the Racial Tensions of the 1920s by Alvin S. Felzenberg. Felzenberg discards the Mckinley-TR-Taft Republicans without considering Coolidge's inheritance, especially from Taft.

Judicial Power & Civil Rights Reconsidered by David E. Bernstein and Ilya Somin. This is a significant paper (in draft?) that illuminates the previously unheard committment of the Taft-appointed Court towards Civil Liberties and the rights of African-Americans.

For some views of the more dubious Roosevelt record on race, see the 1960s-era essays from the Journal of Negro History, William D. Crum: A Negro in Politics by Willard B. Gatewood (1968), and President Theodore Roosevelt and the Negro, 1901-1908, by Seth M. Scheiner (1962). Sorry no links. J-STOR has them.

It is less puzzling than distressing to see how blacks migrated from Taft Republicanism to the Bull Moose and to Wilson in 1912. They craved more from Taft, and they might well have expected it. His weakness, as ever, was in rhetoric, and in a day when rhetoric stood far above what Taft treasured, principle. He did speak for their rights, and he was consistent in his policies in their support. While seeking to defuse "racial feelings" over Federal appointments in the South, he at the same time appointed blacks to Federal positions in the North, including one to the highest ranking Federal officer up to the time, Asst. Attorney General. Still, I understand that in 1912 there was a yearning for more. That's natural and a product of the road paved before them.

Nevertheless, Taft was the only candidate of that year to stand for them beyond politics. He alone spoke during the election of the great 50th anniversary celebration of the Altoona Conference and the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation. On the anniversary, while the other candidates went stupidly silent, Taft said,

The issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation was the initial and the most important step in the freeing of five millions of slaves, who, with their descendants, have now grown into ten millions and constitute more than 10 per cent of our total population. It is, of course, an event in which every lover of his country takes an intense interest. Until the emancipation of the negroes the assertion that ours was the country of liberty was untrue. The Constitution and the Declaration were utterly at variance with each other in the recognition that the former gave to property in human kind. The excision of the cancer represented in the social institution of slavery enabled all Americans to look the world in the face, and say that our pretensions to absolute freedom were founded on actual fact, and did not need saving exceptions to make them truthful.

Throughout that year that was so riled by "nationalism" and "socialism," Taft was the only candidate to speak of the 15th amendment, and of individual and civil rights. Over the hysteria of that election year, Taft's stand for civil rights has been lost. I'll do what I can to remind.

Nicollo unmasked: Bromleyisms here

Constitution's Bodyguard
William Howard Taft and His Defense of the Constitution
During the Election of 1912

[rdf]

The link to the Coolidge paper is outstanding.

Thanks

Richard F.

[ohioWfan]

Thank you! THANK you, nicollo! Wonderful exposition of the truth!

[KC Burke]

An interesting tidbit about Wilson.

Russell Kirk in an essay blamed Wilson for being the primary cause of collective rights being accepted into the American Civil Religion lexicon. He mentions this in an analysis of the term "Human Rights" which he believed Wilson used as a collective trump to individual Property Rights.

As we all know, the duel between the right of an individual and the collective right of the many is always decided in favor of the many by the rationalist or the utilitarian mindset. Sowell in the Conflict of Visions deals with this issue as well in some interesting ways.

The false collective or group right is very subject to General Will or Government as being the champion, guarantor, representative or claimant.

[nicollo]

George Washington himself started this business of "human rights" with,

...this Government being a safeguard of human rights.

Madison spoke it, as well, as did Monroe and Jackson. Lincoln seems not to have used "human rights" and instead spoke of "personal rights of men" and the such.

McKinley in his fourth Message to Congress wrote,

Popular government has demonstrated in its one hundred and twenty-four years of trial here its stability and security, and its efficiency as the best instrument of national development and the best safeguard to human rights.

No where do these men conceive of "human rights" in the collective sense. While Lincoln famously said,

The Democracy of to-day hold the liberty of one man to be absolutely nothing, when in conflict with another man's right of property; Republicans, on the contrary, are for both the man and the dollar, but in case of conflict the man before the dollar.

he was speaking in terms of the natural rights of the indivudual. It is not until that peak moment of the Progressive Era, 1912, that "human rights" takes on the collective sense that you say Kirk saw in Woodrow Wilson -- only the chief culprit was not Wilson but Theodore Roosevelt.

As President, TR seems to have avoided the words "human rights." Typical of his presidential rhetoric was such this-or-that damnation of extremes as,

It is well to keep in mind that exactly as the anarchist is the worst enemy of liberty and the reactionary the worst enemy of order, so the men who defend the rights of property have most to fear from the wrongdoers of great wealth, and the men who are championing popular rights have most to fear from the demagogues who in the name of popular rights would do wrong to and oppress honest business men, honest men of wealth; ...

As President, "Mr. Facing Both Ways," as General Otis called him, placed himself as arbiter of the extremes of both capital and labor. Nothing yet on collective rights. It is into his post-presidency that TR both picks up on the words "human rights" and gives them that frightful odor of class politics with which he saddled and rode the Bull Moose:

We Progressives believe that the people have the right, the power, and the duty to protect themselves and their own welfare; that human rights are supreme over all other rights; that wealth should be the servant, not the master, of the people.

... and ...

Our democracy is now put to a vital test; for the conflict is between human rights on the one side and on the other special privilege asserted as a property right.

It was a progressive disease, and I'd say TR suffered at least as much as Wilson. In any case, TR set the rhetorical lead.

Btw, long before then Jackson settled the supposed "conflict" (in the progressives' way of seeing it) between liberty and equality with this lovely, simple statement of national purpose, from his Fourth Annual Message:

Limited to a general superintending power to maintain peace at home and abroad, and to prescribe laws on a few subjects of general interest not calculated to restrict human liberty, but to enforce human rights, this Government will find its strength and its glory in the faithful discharge of these plain and simple duties.

I also like Dubya's latest:

... there can be no human rights without human liberty.