Woodrow Wilson and Black People

You know, sometimes I just wish I'd pick up a reference book now and then... lol! Actually, this stuff is all on my hard drive for research I'm doing on the 1912 election.

The downside of the web is that it is too easy, and it loosens the researchers backbone. My father, an attorney, will only use the case law databases if he already knows exactly what he's looking for. Otherwise he insists on thumbing the books because it always leads him places he never thought to go.

ohioWfan: I'd like to say there's a good, easy read for a modern conservative's understanding of the Progressive Era -- perhaps rdf's textbook would be a good place to start. I can't think of a single book out there that sees the period as I do, well, except my own... That's probably not a good sign. There are some really, really good books on the Progressive Era, but they're invetibly hinged leftward. Richard Hoftstadter's "Age of Reform" is probably the best, most removed look at the period. Hofstadter doesn't have an agenda, for the most part, although he's been accused of being unfair and mean to the agrarians and the populists, which I find hilarious. One of my favorite books on the progresives is Gabriel Kolko's "Triumph of Conservatism." Kolko is a leftwing nutjob who's complaint is that the progressives didn't go far enough into nationalism and collectivism. Perhaps x can recommend better reads.

I don't know. There are a lot of scholars working on the Progressive era who view it in terms of the Progressives attempt to get every more control over society. The left and right critiques tend to get melded together, and you get people analyzing Jim Crow and empire as facets of the progressive program. But in recent years academics have shyed away from the big names like TR or Wilson and focused on much smaller and more local topics.

It's hard to think of good things to say about the progressives. They're too centralizing and power-oriented for the Right and too White, Protestant and moralistic for the Left. But looking at how the reputations of Hamilton, Adams, and the Federalists have been rising and rising in the last ten years or so, it's likely that somebody will try to bring the Progressives back into fashion.

One question about Wilson is just how strong Black support for him was in 1912. It looks a lot like a Northeastern academic and professional phenomenon, a gravitation to Wilson by African-Americans who fit the profile of Progressivism and considered themselves and Wilson cut from the same cloth. What they expected was far beyond what White Americans would allow at the beginning of the 20th century, and that's a common failing of intellectuals in politics: they pick up on the main theme of the day, but miss the troubling and contradictory details.

I wonder why DuBois, William Trotter didn't go with TR. Were Trotter and DuBois expecting to become king makers by throwing Black support to the Democrats? Or were they taken in by Wilson's academic manner, so much closer to what they valued themselves than TR's bluster? If they weren't rather more radical than most Americans in the day, one might think of them as Black Mugwumps. There's a strongly anti-Wilson article here.

BTW, James Pinkerton has a Bush-Wilson column this week.

But in recent years academics have shyed away from the big names like TR or Wilson and focused on much smaller and more local topics.

I guess that's why I feel like there's nothing new in books. I can point to articles, but no books. They've cut history into pieces. Is it to stay away from the big names, as you say, or just easier ways to put things in print by splitting logs?

Good remarks there about the progressives. I'm inclined towards Taft for, while he was a progressive among progressives, he alone among the major figures was willing to say "enough!" I think under Roosevelt Taft was quite taken away by the man, as were so many others, but once in power Taft took head-on that distinction between words and acts -- and consequences, which always follow acts, something TR never enjoyed. TR's legacy was like the Celubra Cut: the mud flowed behind it.

I have yet to properly visit with Dubois and Trotter in 1912, so I can't speak to their views on Wilson other than the general distaste in their movement for the Republican primary and the Republican and Progressive conventions, which were wholly abusive, on all sides, of racial politics in patronage and delegates. My first guess is that Wilson seemed an alternative route, and not a destination.

Thanks for your words, and thanks for the links!

I hope this isn't a bother...

Just ran across a Taft passage that reminded me of the "human rights" discussion (or my soliloquy on it) on this thread. Taft's reply in 1912 to the growing rhetoric of "human rights" over "property rights" was rather sublime:

It has been said, and it is a common platform expression, that it is well to prefer the man above the dollar, as if the preservation of property rights has some other purpose than the assistance to and the uplifting of human rights. Private property was not established in order to gratify love of some material wealth or capital. It was established as an instrumentality in the progress of civilization and the uplifting of man, and it is equality of opportunity that private property promotes by assuring to man the result of his own labor, thrift, and self-restraint.

When, therefore, the demagogue mounts the platform and announces that he prefers the man above the dollar, he ought to be interrogated as to what he means thereby -- whether he is in favor of abolishing the right of the institution of private property and of taking away from the poor man the opportunity to become wealthy by the use of the abilities that God has given him, the cultivation of the virtues with which practice of self-restraint and the exercise of moral courage will fortify him.

While it would seem that too few listened in 1912, enough did to preserve those rights of property and the Constitition from which they come.

Glad you enjoyed! And right you are, from your homepage, with:

Conservatives aren’t, as is often claimed, the trolls standing athwart the path of history, yelling, Stop!

Here for some fun from Taft with this concept of who, exactly, is crying "Stop!"

The present political situation is a curious one. Indeed, the condition of public opinion is curious. It seems to be feeling the effect of the flood of misrepresentation which manifests itself in a protest against everything and everybody who is not in the forefront crying “Stop thief!”

It is not a natural condition, however, and we people of America are so sane on the whole that I look for a change, not rapid, but sufficiently marked in the course of three or four years to give those of us that have not been carried off our feet hope of the Republic. With such a tremendous cry and so little wool I think the people will realize it after a while and give credit to those of us who are trying to make progress by legislation and by things done.

I think you will find Taft to be of a mind with Burke as regards the forceful conservative. The general essence of my working paper on the election of 1912 is Taft's defense of first principles (here -- it's long, but you'll find therein some Taft gems).

READ NICHOLAS PATLER'S FASCINATING BOOK, PUB. IN 2004, TITLED, JIM CROW AND THE WILSON ADMINISTRATION: PROTESTING FEDERAL SEGREGATION IN THE EARLY TWENTIETH CENTURY. It is by far the most thorough account of federal Jim Crow during the Wilson years--much more thorough than a few others that have been mentioned by users on the Free Republic site. In addition, his chapter--I believe 3--"Jim Crow in the White House"--deals rather extensively with Wilson's racial views, the best treatment I have ever seen. Patler not only explores in depth the various aspects of federal segregation, etc., but he demonstrates that African Americans and white sympathizers launched an amazing collective protest, consisting of thousands of people nationwide, who passionately challenged the spread of racism in the federal government--this forty years before the modern civil rights movement! His book really challenges many perceptions of African Americans and protest in the Progressive Era. I came away from this read with a sense of awe because it showed that African Americans had a powerful sense of justice even then, and help set the tone for the modern civil rights movment. Pay attention here to William Monroe Trotter! He has been revived and will inspire contemporary generations. Also, read my review for this book on amazon.com.

It never ceases to amaze me how quickly we jump on the bandwagon when what we hear coincides with what we want to hear. But do we try to correct the record when we find something that doesn't go along with what we want to hear? No. As a black man, it is more damaging to me and how I percieve my fellow black men and women, when I read things like some of the posts here. Woodrow Wilson did NOT praise "Birth of a Nation". He only screened it in the White House, and the statement that he praised it was not made by him, but by Thomas Dixon, a classmate at Princeton. So that's one lie that needs to be corrected. "Birth of a Nation" was made in 1915. Think about that for a minute, and don't try to revise history by saying that just because anti-Black attitudes were common, that they were wrong. They've ALWAYS been wrong, but frankly, 100 years from now, the historians and sociologists will be saying a lot of things about now that don't go with how WE think of them. They had them then, because they were products of their times. Don't be a revisionist. Speak the truth, even if it is a negative one.

The second lie that needs to be corrected is that Wilson took some kind of action to create segregationist policies in the government. Try reading the Papers of Woodrow Wilson edited by Arthur Link to get the truth on that. There are dozens of letters and papers in those 69 volumes that show where Wilson tried to get Blacks appointed to Federal offices, Judgeships and other positions, but was *always* blocked by the Republican Senate. Wilson was NEVER responsible for Blacks being fired or losing their jobs. It was the management of Federal offices and departments who were doing that. There are several documented cases of Wilson intervening, only to be overriden by Congress. Again, this was a product of the times. We may not like it, but that's how it was.

I'm not entirely sure where this "racial attitudes in the 50s and 60s can be traced directly back to Wilson" comes from, because it simply isn't so. I have enough problems because of the color of my skin. I don't need some misguided and misinformed people making it worse, by playing a race card that is incorrect. There are plenty of racial injustices that we as Blacks have to deal with today, and sitting around complaining that it was bad 100 years ago does nothing to accomplish change today. The truth may well be negative, and it certainly may not be one that we like, but it is the truth. Try using it sometime. It increases credibility. I was the first person in my family to get a graduate degree, and only the second in my family to go to college. Please don't create issues, because you don't like some parts of the truth. History gets rewritten enough.

Thank you for the honor of your first post on FreeRepublic, but Woodrow Wilson was a complete racist, even by the low standards of his day.

Read something beyond DNC propaganda. His 8 miserable years in office set black America back 50 years. He was the Jimmy Carter of the early 20th Century --- full of "Populist" ideas and sanctimonious as all hell, but with no common sense.

Here's some more sources.

PBS.org. Wilson: A Portrait

U.S. Dept of Labor (dol.gov)

Reason Magazine

Here's another....

The most shameful aspect of Wilson'spresidency was the adoption of segregation in the federal government. For race relations during the Wilson years, see Leon Litwack's excellent 'Trouble in Mind: Black Southerners in the Age of Jim Crow', while Desmond King provides a good account of the Wilson administration's segregation campaign in 'Separate and Unequal: Black Americans and the US Federal Government '. In 'Jim Crow and the Wilson Administration: Protesting Federal Segregation in the Early Twentieth Century', Nicholas Patler demonstrates that many Americans objected to Wilson's expansion of segregation, though ultimately to no avail. Source: Woodrow Willson: World Statesman

The man was a disaster for race relations and we are paying for his "Richmond elite" childhood to this very day. The early 20th century was an opportunity to change long held attitudes but Wilson only hearkened back to the "old South" of his youth.

He was the wrong man at the absolute wrong time. If either Roosevelt or Taft had won in 1912, much of our inter racial problems of today would not exist.

He took a system that was on a gradual positive flight path and slammed it into reverse --- but he was always a nice Liberal all for the "working man" while doing it -- Jimmy Carter the 1st.

But thanks again for the first post. That's an honor. Don't be shy about arguing back at me. I don't bite --- other than verbally. ;~))

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.