And the Award Goes to ... President Woodrow Wilson

By W. F. Twyman, Jr.

Before I embark upon the thrust of this argument, I want to express my sadness upon hearing Samuel Kronen of the Substack Alien Nation has retired from writing. I wish Samuel well in the next chapter in his life. I discovered Samuel three or four years ago on Quillette. Few writers are as captivating with words or as locked onto the meaning of truth as Samuel. His essays will be missed. The world of commentary will be poorer without his regular creations of thought. https://mail.yahoo.com/d/search/keyword=Alien%2520Nation/messages/AET77Bgkx9itZQW2lwOGWMEX4-U

We all strive to better discourse in the public square. Sometimes we miss and sometimes we stumble upon the mark. I cannot recall an essay where Samuel missed the mark.

Godspeed Sam and good health!

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Out of the eight U.S. presidents (Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, Woodrow Wilson, Calvin Coolidge, Herbert Hoover, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman, Dwight D. Eisenhower) we have read biographies for in my book club, the absolute bottom of the barrel president on race is President Woodrow Wilson. No one can compare or comes close to Wilson as a cardboard Bad Guy on race relations. Most presidents offered an element of surprise. Not Wilson. I was primed to hold a low opinion of the man and he did not disappoint.

Here is why.

First, “[h]is administration instituted segregation — ‘Jim Crow’ laws — in Washington. D.C.” https://www.amazon.com/Wilson-A-Scott-Berg-audiobook/dp/B00DEK2HCM/ref=sr_1_1?crid=QZ4N6J3RB56A&keywords=Wilson+%22A.+Scott+Berg%22&qid=1694921689&s=books&sprefix=wilson+a.+scott+berg+%2Cstripbooks%2C500&sr=1-1 See pages 11-12. During Reconstruction and up until the Wilson administration, black civil servants in the federal government worked alongside white colleagues. It is fair to cast federal government employment as relatively advanced in race relations between 1870 and 1913. All of this racial sanity changed with President Wilson.

He truly turned back the hands of time on race. Two thumbs down.

Second, Wilson grew up in the Deep South of Augusta, Georgia. We should never caricature or stereotype someone due to their region of origins. And yet the author A. Scott Berg suggests President Wilson was ambivalent about the issue of slavery. This ambivalence followed Wilson to the White House. Id. at page 30. Call me a modern man, if you like. No U.S. President after the Civil War should have ambivalent feelings about the issue of slavery.

That would be another two thumbs down.

Third, “as a college professor” at Princeton, Wilson wrote in his book Division and Reunion, that southerner relations with their slaves were human. Id. at page 32

“Bartender, I would like to order another round of Two Thumbs Down! Thanks.”

Fourth, a poor black student from South Carolina sought admission to Princeton. Wilson disabused the black applicant of his interest in attending the college — “that it is altogether inadvisable for a colored man to enter Princeton.” Id. at page 156 Wilson steered the black applicant away from Princeton to Harvard, Dartmouth, or Brown. The year was 1909.

Meanwhile, black Americans had been admitted to Brown University since 1877, https://brownbears.com/news/2019/2/17/diversity-and-inclusion-28-days-of-black-at-brown-day-17-inman-page-1877-browns-first-black-graduate.aspx#:~:text=Inman%20Edward%20Page%2C%20Class%20of,from%20the%20University%20in%201877, Harvard Medical School since 1850, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Delany, and Dartmouth College since 1775 https://www.adotson.vsfd.hoodmuseum.dartmouth.edu/first-black-students-at-dartmouth-1

Even for the year 1909, Wilson was well behind the times on race. There is no excuse, particularly since these early black college men distinguished themselves well. The first black graduate of Brown was valedictorian of his class in 1877. The first black graduate of Oberlin College, George Boyer Vashon, was valedictorian of his class in 1844. George Washington Henderson graduated first in the Class of 1877 at the University of Vermont. https://vtcynic.com/features/the-story-of-george-washington-henderson/

“Bartender, that’ll be another round of Two Thumbs Down!”

Finally, Wilson as a professor and president of Princeton presided over a true culture and consciousness of white supremacy. “The only person of color whom a student or professor might encounter was somebody who served or cleaned and probably lived in slums students would never even see, only blocks from the college…Only a decade earlier, the Princeton football team had exited a dining hall when Harvard’s team, with its sole black player, entered. Id. at page 156.

Two Thumbs Down!

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For these reasons (and many more but I don’t have the time for a deep dive), President Woodrow Wilson was the absolute worst U.S. President on race in our reading. You earned this recognition, Woodrow, fair and square.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Chavis

Note — John Chavis was the first black student to study at what is now known as Princeton University… in 1792.