• Atelopus-zeteki@kbin.run
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    2 months ago

    I’m not much of a historian, so I have to go look up these references.

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

    “While Wilson’s tenure is often noted for progressive achievement, his time in office was one of unprecedented regression in racial equality, with his presidency serving as the lowest point of the nadir of American race relations.[1]”

    https://www.history.com/news/woodrow-wilson-racial-segregation-jim-crow-ku-klux-klan

    “How Woodrow Wilson Tried to Reverse Black American Progress By promoting the Ku Klux Klan and overseeing segregation of the federal workforce, the 28th president helped erase gains African Americans had made since Reconstruction.”

    "Woodrow Wilson is best known as the World War I president who earned a Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to found the League of Nations. A progressive reformer who fought against monopolies and child labor, he served two terms starting in 1913.

    But Wilson was also a segregationist who wrote a history textbook praising the Confederacy and, in particular, the Ku Klux Klan. As president, he rolled back hard-fought economic progress for Black Americans, overseeing the segregation of multiple agencies of the federal government. "

    https://woodrowwilsonhouse.org/wilson-topics/wilson-and-race/ "

    As the Democratic nominee in 1912, Wilson had garnered the cautious support of many among the nation’s influential and politically diverse Black leadership. His New Freedom platform promising fairness and equality caught the attention of prominent African American activists including W.E.B. Du Bois, founder of the NAACP and publisher of The Crisis magazine, and William Monroe Trotter, a prominent and vocal activist and publisher of the civil rights newspaper, The Guardian.

    Before long, however, Wilson’s policies and personal racism dashed the hopes of Du Bois, Trotter, and many other African Americans who had broken away from the Republican Party – or in Du Bois’s case the Socialist Party – to vote for the “progressive” Democrat. Wilson’s failure to address Jim Crow disenfranchisement, his decision to screen Birth of a Nation at the White House in 1915, his dismissal of African American activists, and – most notably – his administration’s active segregation of the federal government, together helped to further cement the systemic racial injustices that defined American life in the 20th century. "