Oswald Garrison Villard to Woodrow Wilson

Title

Oswald Garrison Villard to Woodrow Wilson

Creator

Villard, Oswald Garrison, 1872-1949

Identifier

WWP18051

Date

1913 September 29

Source

Wilson Papers, Library of Congress, Library of Congress, Washington, District of Columbia

Subject

Wilson, Woodrow, 1856-1924--Correspondence

Text

My dear Mr. President

I have such a high opinion of your judgment and such a complete belief in your desire to do justice to all American citizens, that I am naturally greatly moved by your kind note of September 22nd. You may be sure that it is very difficult for those of us who feel towards the Wilson Administration as the officers of our Association do, and took the responsibility of counselling the colored people to vote for you, to assume a critical position which might eventually lead to direct opposition. But our plain duty to these people compels us to ask you a few questions before we can decide the matter of policy which your letter raises. By “just and cool requipoise” we presume you mean that we should refrain from the policy of protest which we have conceived to be our duty since our protest against the segregation in the departments at Washington failed to bring us a definite statement of your policy, or any answer. Even during this period of protest the process of segregation goes on steadily. Thus, Mr. McAdoo tells me that he is taking every white clerk out of the Register’s Division, and the spirit of segregation is rife under him as we know from our own observation. I know Mr. McAdoo’s motive and respect it, but he does not see that in his well-meant desire to give the colored clerks an opportunity to contrast, as a group, more clearly with the white clerks, he is driving the entering wedge for a cruel and un-American segregation; that this division will immediately be called the “nigger division” and that the precedent thus established will be of the utmost danger to the colored people long after the motive has been forgotten and Mr. McAdoo has disappeared from public life.
Under these circumstances meetings of protest are beginning to take place all over the country,—one in Cincinnati already, and others scheduled for Washington, Baltimore, Boston and other cities. Now if, as we take it you desire, we suspend, so far as lies in our power, such efforts to protest, will you not give through us to the country a clear-cut statement of what the attitude of your Administration is going to be, together with an assurance that so far as lies within your power the process of segregation now going on in the departments shall cease? Have not eleven millions of colored citizens a right to know your attitude in regard to them? They have had nothing since your assurance of October 16th, 1912 that they might “count on me for absolute fair dealing and for everything by which I could assist in advancing the interests of their race in the United States.” The mass of the colored people knows only that segregation in the departments have been introduced by your Administration and that officers heretofore given to them have been given to white people, and that not a single Presidential appointment of a colored man has been made save one which was withdrawn. As a result you have the condition described in Booker Wqashington’s letter which I sent you in which he declared that never has he seen the colored people so depressed and embittered.Our Association is but one of many. We have not the slightest idea that if we ceased our protest we could assuage this feeling of bitterness and humiliation, or induce them as a race to remain in “cool and just equipoise.” They, unfortunately, know that they have been repeatedly urged to take precisely this position, only to discover that while they were thus in equipoise more and more of the rights and privileges to which they are entitled under the Constitution have been taken away from them by the race which vaunts itself superior, but is superior neither in justice nor humanity. Vardaman, Tillman, Hoke Smith, and the other demagogues of this type will never for a moment remain cool and just on this issue. I suppose you are aware that the Democratic majority is discharging all the colored men holding office in the Capitol, not now protected by civil service rules?Finally, let me say as a deliberate judgment based on on nearly twenty years of experience in this work, that nothing but a vigorous confronting of such men as these, and a ceaseless battling for the colored people’s rights will prevent further discrimination of vast proportions and undreamed of bitterness.Will you not, therefore, let me hear from you again further as to your position, particularly how soon you will be able to clarify the whole situation by a characteristically strong utterance as Executive of this Nation, making it clear to the humblest negro what you propose to do on this vital question? Will you not, for the sake of a better understanding of the whole situation on both sides, grant a hearing to Mr. Storey, Dr. DuBois, myself, and other members of this Association—at an early date?

Faithfully yours,
Oswald Garrison Villard

Original Format

Letter

To

Wilson, Woodrow, 1856-1924

Files

http://resources.presidentwilson.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Temp00541.pdf

Tags

Citation

Villard, Oswald Garrison, 1872-1949, “Oswald Garrison Villard to Woodrow Wilson,” 1913 September 29, WWP18051, First Year Wilson Papers, Woodrow Wilson Presidential Library & Museum, Staunton, Virginia.