The History of Amerikkka: 28th President of the United States Woodrow Wilson

The following information was not written by me, and is taken directly from Wikipedia.

"While president of Princeton University, Wilson discouraged blacks from even applying for admission. Princeton would not admit its first black student until the 1940s.

Wilson allowed many of his cabinet officials to establish official segregation in federal government offices, for the first time since 1863. "His administration imposed full racial segregation in Washington and hounded from office considerable numbers of black federal employees." Wilson fired many black Republican office holders, but also appointed a few black Democrats. W.E.B. DuBois, a leader of the NAACP, campaigned for Wilson and in 1918 was offered an Army commission in charge of dealing with race relations. (DuBois accepted but failed his Army physical and did not serve.) When a delegation of blacks protested his discriminatory actions, Wilson told them that "segregation is not a humiliation but a benefit, and ought to be so regarded by you gentlemen". In 1914, he told New York Times that "If the colored people made a mistake in voting for me, they ought to correct it".

Wilson was understandably attacked by African-Americans for his actions, but ironically, he was also attacked by southern hard line racists, such as Georgian Thomas E. Watson, for not going far enough in restricting black employment in the federal government. The segregation introduced into the federal workforce by the Wilson administration was kept in placed by the succeeding Republican administrations and was not finally rescinded until the Truman Administration.

Woodrow Wilson's History of the American People explained the Ku Klux Klan of the late 1860s as the natural outgrowth of Reconstruction, a lawless reaction to a lawless period. Wilson noted that the Klan “began to attempt by intimidation what they were not allowed to attempt by the ballot or by any ordered course of public action.” In short, Wilson accepted the Southern version of Reconstruction with Southern whites being victimized.

Wilson's words were repeatedly quoted in the film The Birth of a Nation, which has come under fire for racism. Thomas Dixon, author of the novel The Clansman upon which the film is based, was one of Wilson's students at Johns Hopkins in the 1890s. Dixon arranged a special White House preview (this was the first time a film was shown in the White House) without telling Wilson what the film was about. Wilson most likely did not make the statement, "It is like writing history with lightning, my only regret is that it is all so terribly true." That was invented by a Hollywood press agent. In fact Wilson felt he had been tricked by Dixon and publicly said he did not like the film; Wilson blocked its showing during the war. In a 1923 letter to Senator Morris Sheppard of Texas Wilson noted of the reborn Klan, “...no more obnoxious or harmful organization has ever shown itself in our affairs.”

from Birth Of A Nation