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To: Ditto
Wow. I asked too soon.

Do you have a resource (Internet or hardcopy) for the information you cited there?

10 posted on 01/28/2005 8:07:19 AM PST by ohioWfan (Have you PRAYED for your President today?)
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To: ohioWfan
That stuff is off the top of my head but Here's a quick link http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woodrow_Wilson

I'll see if I can find some of my older links over the weekend when I have more time.

14 posted on 01/28/2005 8:38:08 AM PST by Ditto ( No trees were killed in sending this message, but billions of electrons were inconvenienced.)
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To: ohioWfan
Excerpts:

Missed Manners: Wilson Lectures a Black Leader

In 1912 Woodrow Wilson probably received more black votes than any previous Democratic presidential candidate, but his administration proved to be a bitter disappointment to African Americans. Black voters had abandoned William Howard Taft, Wilson’s Republican predecessor, in part because he had appointed or retained a mere thirty-one black officeholders. But Wilson made only nine black appointments, and eight of these were Republican carryovers. Worse still, Wilson extended and defended segregation in the federal civil service. Black workers were forced to use inferior and segregated washrooms, and screens were set up to separate black and white workers in the same government offices. African Americans protested Wilson’s policies. 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. The encounter made front-page news, and subsequent rallies protested Wilson’s poor treatment of Trotter. But the segregation of the federal service continued.

Woodrow Wilson

38th President of the United States
28th under the US Constitution

Although he entered the 1912 Democratic National Convention a poor second to Speaker of the House Champ Clark, he won the nomination after 46 ballots. Offering a program of reform he called the New Freedom, Wilson ran against a divided Republican party. In November, Wilson won only 41.85 percent of the popular vote but polled 435 electoral votes, compared with Roosevelt's 88 and President Taft's 8.

[...]

Segregation had never been the custom in federal government offices in Washington, D.C. However, faced with strong pressure from his fellow Southerners, Wilson allowed segregation in the capital. Challenged with his vague promises before election that he would treat blacks with fairness, he could only say that the new policy of segregation was in the best interests of blacks and he would angrily end the interview when he was disputed.

So you'd like to... learn about Woodrow Wilson A guide by Mark Klobas, fascinated by our 28th president.

The most shameful aspect of Wilson's presidency 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.

Dixiecrats Triumphant
The menacing Mr. Wilson
By Charles Paul Freund

Wilson's racist views were hardly a secret. His own published work was peppered with Lost Cause visions of a happy antebellum South. As president of Princeton, he had turned away black applicants, regarding their desire for education to be "unwarranted." He was elected president because the 1912 campaign featured a third party, Theodore Roosevelt's Bullmoose Party, which drew Republican votes from incumbent William Howard Taft. Wilson won a majority of votes in only one state (Arizona) outside the South.

What Wilson's election meant to the South was "home rule;" that is, license to pursue its racial practices without concern about interference from the federal government. That is exactly what the 1948 Dixiecrats wanted. But "home rule" was only the beginning. Upon taking power in Washington, Wilson and the many other Southerners he brought into his cabinet were disturbed at the way the federal government went about its own business. One legacy of post-Civil War Republican ascendancy was that Washington's large black populace had access to federal jobs, and worked with whites in largely integrated circumstances. Wilson's cabinet put an end to that, bringing Jim Crow to Washington.

Wilson allowed various officials to segregate the toilets, cafeterias, and work areas of their departments. One justification involved health: White government workers had to be protected from contagious diseases, especially venereal diseases, that racists imagined were being spread by blacks. In extreme cases, federal officials built separate structures to house black workers. Most black diplomats were replaced by whites; numerous black federal officials in the South were removed from their posts; the local Washington police force and fire department stopped hiring blacks.

Wilson's own view, as he expressed it to intimates, was that federal segregation was an act of kindness. In historian Friedman's paraphrase, "Off by themselves with only a white supervisor, blacks would not be forced out of their jobs by energetic white employees."

According to Friedman, President Wilson said as much to those appalled blacks who protested his actions. He told one protesting black delegation that "segregation is not a humiliation but a benefit, and ought to be so regarded by you gentlemen." When the startled journalist William Monroe Trotter objected, Wilson essentially threw him out of the White House. "Your manner offends me," Wilson told him. Blacks all over the country complained about Wilson, but the president was unmoved. "If the colored people made a mistake in voting for me," he told The New York Times in 1914, "they ought to correct it."

19 posted on 01/28/2005 9:50:20 AM PST by lepton ("It is useless to attempt to reason a man out of a thing he was never reasoned into"--Jonathan Swift)
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