Woodrow Wilson, a Racist Bigot

[struggle4progress]

SEPTEMBER 28, 2015

... I inquired about the nature of our deep adulation for U.S. President and former president of Princeton, Thomas Woodrow Wilson, class of 1879. At the University, the Woodrow Wilson School of Public Policy and International Affairs (a graduate school and academic department), Wilson Residential College and the Woodrow Wilson Café all bear the former president’s name. It is impossible to be a student at Princeton without being constantly confronted with Wilson’s legacy, or at least a counterfeit reproduction ... Wilson’s legacy — one distinctly rooted in racism and bigotry — is rarely discussed ...

When our university fails to stand up against or acknowledge the wrongdoings of a man who proudly branded himself a racist and segregationist, we all become complicit in the crimes committed against .. black and brown people ...

http://dailyprincetonian.com/opinion/2015/09/on-the-legacy-of-woodrow-wilson-a-racist-bigot/

[bemildred]

1. A bad President in every respect.

Racist, warmonger, founder of our police state, and vainglorious to a fault.

[struggle4progress]

3. That's not quite accurate. The civil war amendments were taken quite seriously

by the so-called "Radicals" of the Reconstruction era; and they managed to set in place quite a lot, that was only later overturned as the Jim Crow enthusiasts came into political power in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Wilson was one such enthusiast. The Federal civil service was, when Wilson took office, one of the most integrated institutions in the country; and what we have almost entirely forgotten is that Wilson set out to re-segregate the Federal executive branch and to drive out its many black employees, such as those in the post office