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You can hear me die on the Woodrow Wilson hill in this episode.
Why do I bother? It's not to make you like Wilson. It's to make sure we get our history right.
Allow me to further elaborate, with some historical artifacts... https://twitter.com/bloggingheads/status/1278475678564974592
Why do I bother? It's not to make you like Wilson. It's to make sure we get our history right.
Allow me to further elaborate, with some historical artifacts... https://twitter.com/bloggingheads/status/1278475678564974592
When Princeton announced the removal of Wilson's name from its public policy school, AP reported that Wilson "spoke approvingly of the Ku Klux Klan"... https://apnews.com/8a7fe20d9dc5a2b45e0eefea66486053?utm_campaign=SocialFlow&utm_source=Twitter&utm_medium=AP
...Michael Beschloss shared screenshots of Wilson's writing of a "great Ku Klux Klan," from his book "History of the American People" https://twitter.com/BeschlossDC/status/1277309404547887108 & as used by D. W. Griffith in "Birth of a Nation" https://twitter.com/BeschlossDC/status/1276931208778260481
The AP is wrong, the quotes out of context...
The AP is wrong, the quotes out of context...
...The quote comes from page 60 of "History of the American People, but you have to turn the pages and read pages 63 and 64 (which you can do here: https://archive.org/details/historyofamerica05wils/page/62/mode/2up )...
..Wilson explains that the KKK were murderers...
...Wilson charges the KKK with "brutal crimes" and a "reign of terror" and "society was infinitely more disturbed than defended"...
...now this may seem like hair-splitting. Wilson still was critical of Reconstruction. Wilson still allowed for segregation of the Treasury and Postal Service, as desired by those department heads, and defended it after the fact. The military in WWI was also segregated...
...There is no debate over whether Wilson was racist and adopted racist policies that harmed African-Americans.
But there *is* debate over whether Wilson was a man of his time or a man who actively and eagerly turned the clock back...
But there *is* debate over whether Wilson was a man of his time or a man who actively and eagerly turned the clock back...
...and that is not an mere academic debate, because it directly relates to the larger matter of how and why efforts to achieve racial equality were increasingly sidelined during the Progressive Era of the early 20th century...
...if Wilson was a KKK supporter, it's very easy to assert that Wilson was not just a man of his time. But Wilson was not a KKK supporter...
...What else was happening with race and politics in the run-up to Wilson's presidency? The Republican Party, long the political home of African-Americans, was turning away from being an advocate of Black interests...
...In 1901, shortly after Teddy Roosevelt assumes the presidency following William McKinley's assassination, Roosevelt invites Booker T. Washington to the White House for dinner. This was a bold move, and invites vicious backlash...
...Here’s how Edmund Morris describes the reaction, in “Theodore Rex” (I’m covering the n-word)...
...After some initial defiance, Roosevelt quietly backs down...
...in 1906, TR severely damages his bond with African-Americans over the Brownsville riot. Black soldiers were falsely accused of rioting and killing a white bartender. Roosevelt discharges 167 of them without honor, without a trial, without a hearing... https://www.thirteen.org/wnet/jimcrow/stories_events_browns.html
...Booker T. Washington recognized how much damage TR did to his relationship with Blacks (from “Theodore Rex”...
...TR is succeeded by Taft. In Taft's inaugural, he announces a change in policy: no Blacks in govt posts in the South ("in a community in which the race feeling is so widespread and acute as to interfere with the ease ... with which the local government business can be done")...
...also of note, on the First Lady's watch, white and black servants were also segregated in their dining quarters (from Margaret Truman's "The President's House")...
...Historian Lewis Gould explained how Taft ousted black officials in the South in hopes of impressing white Democrats...
...then in the 1912 election, when TR broke with Taft and launched the Progressive Party, he calculated that he could not give Southern blacks a role in the new party, rationalizing it was for the greater good (from “Theodore Rex”)...
...so when Wilson wins, and brings Southern Democrats into his cabinet, who successfully push for segregation in their government agencies, in one sense it is turning the clock, but in another it is a continuation of a downward trajectory already in motion...
...as historian John Milton Cooper put it, Wilson was not so much a southerner on race, but "essentially resembled the great majority of white northeners of his time in ignoring racial problems and wishing they would go away"...
...Wilson's rationalization of segregation resemble the rationalizations of Taft and TR. At minimum, that bolsters the case for Wilson being a man of his time, and speaks a larger failing of white American society in the Progressive Era...
...of course, it's not a cut-and-dry story and there is plenty of room for debate. But that requires knowing the facts, and not pushing false information such as Wilson being a KKK supporter.
And with that, I die on this hill.
And with that, I die on this hill.
