The President and Segregation
Title
The President and Segregation
Creator
The Washington Post
Identifier
CS31A
Date
c. 1914 November
Source
Library of Congress
Wilson Papers, Series 4, 152A Reel 231, Manuscript Division
Wilson Papers, Series 4, 152A Reel 231, Manuscript Division
Publisher
Woodrow Wilson Presidential Library & Museum
Subject
Trotter, William Monroe, 1872-1934
African-Americans--segregation
Contributor
Althea Cupo
Maria Matlock
Language
English
Is Part Of
CS31
Provenance
Digital copy acquired from federal archives by previous WWPL Archivist, Heidi Hackford.
Text
The President and Segregation.
Bad manners are bound to hurt even a good cause, and the last place where disrespect if to be tolerated is the White House. If William Monroe Trotter was, as appears, insolent to Mr. Wilson yesterday, he has impaired his advocacy of the rights of the colored people and hurt them all as well. But Mr. Wilson, we feel, should make allowances, not perhaps for the hasty temper of a man whose passionate desire for justice for his race often leads him astray, but because of the genuine wrongs of which Mr. Trotter complains. It is a sad blot upon the Wilson Administration that it has tolerated, nay, drawn the color line, without real cause, save, as Mr. Trotter truthfully put it, the racial antipathies of Messrs. Burleson, John Skelton Williams, and McAdoo. For an Administration which talks about a New Freedom and boasts of having bestowed upon businessmen, not only to be blind to the wrongs of full ten millions of American citizens, but to add to them is truly discouraging. Mr. Wilson can feel keenly for the governmental wrongs of the “submerged 85 per cent.” of the people of Mexico, of whom so many are Indians and of a mixed parentage, but he has yet to say a really sympathetic word about the wrongs of the millions in the South who are without voice in their own government.
The difficulty lies, of course, in putting yourself in the other fellow’s place, in having some appreciation of what it means to be the victim of prejudice and injustice, to be wronged without the power to remedy the wrong. That Mr. Wilson is unable to visualize this, we repeat, the more disappointing because there are so many injured persons with whom he does sympathize so understandingly. His unusual vision and imagination leave him, however, when it comes to disenfranchisement of women and to permitting his subordinates to inflict indignities upon American citizens in the immediate vicinity of the White House. If he could only be one of the submerged 10 per cent. of our people in Washington for forty-eight hours he could never have palliated the wrong done, as he is reported to have yesterday, by saying that segregation was enforces for the comfort and best interests of both races, in order to overcome friction. He would know then that it makes neither for the comfort nor for the best interests of the races, but invariably leads to added friction and creates deep and lasting unhappiness among the segregated. This problem has vexed him and caused him heartache more than once in his Administration, and it will not cease to plague him until he lays down the law that sets up equality of treatment of all employees in the Government service.
Again, Mr. Wilson is reported to have resented Mr. Trotter’s statement that if this discrimination were not ended, the negroes who voted for him would have declared that this was “political blackmail.” But this is the time-honored American way of showing disapproval of an elected official’s conduct. When Mr. Wilson was a candidate for President in 1912, he declared: “Should I become President of the United States, they (the colored people) may count upon me for absolute fair dealing and for everything which I could assist in advancing the interest of their race in the United States.” On the strength of this many colored people and their white friends advocated Mr. Wilson’s cause, who would rather have cut off their hands than have aided Mr. Wilson if they had known that he was intending to draw the color line in the departments upon the excuse that there is a certain point in the relations of the races where friction must occur. To them that is neither absolute fair dealing nor advancing their cause, but putting it back, because it sets the stamp of government approval upon color prejudice. To expect after this that the problem can be kept out of politics, as Mr. Wilson is quoted as urging is to expect the impossible.
With Mr. Wilson’s feelings as to the ultimate solution of the negro problem we are not to-day concerned. He may or may not have a constructive programme to suggest. The issue is simply whether a hateful East Indian caste shall be established in Washington or not. We had supposed, after the investigations of last winter, that the vicious policy had been checked; we understood that it was to be abandoned gradually. In numerous instances the Jim-Crowing had, we know, been stopped. The more discouraging is it to find the President apparently upholding what the World justly calls the “foolish indiscretions of members of his Cabinet.” There was no genuine complaint as to the conditions in Washington. Colored and white employees had worked side by side for fifty years. Some of them had been appointed by Grover Cleveland- one of his appointees to high place being the father of Mr. Trotter, a veteran of the Fifty-fifth Massachusetts. But the Wilson Administration went out of its way to create the issue it now deplores, and cannot see a way clear to admitting [end]
Bad manners are bound to hurt even a good cause, and the last place where disrespect if to be tolerated is the White House. If William Monroe Trotter was, as appears, insolent to Mr. Wilson yesterday, he has impaired his advocacy of the rights of the colored people and hurt them all as well. But Mr. Wilson, we feel, should make allowances, not perhaps for the hasty temper of a man whose passionate desire for justice for his race often leads him astray, but because of the genuine wrongs of which Mr. Trotter complains. It is a sad blot upon the Wilson Administration that it has tolerated, nay, drawn the color line, without real cause, save, as Mr. Trotter truthfully put it, the racial antipathies of Messrs. Burleson, John Skelton Williams, and McAdoo. For an Administration which talks about a New Freedom and boasts of having bestowed upon businessmen, not only to be blind to the wrongs of full ten millions of American citizens, but to add to them is truly discouraging. Mr. Wilson can feel keenly for the governmental wrongs of the “submerged 85 per cent.” of the people of Mexico, of whom so many are Indians and of a mixed parentage, but he has yet to say a really sympathetic word about the wrongs of the millions in the South who are without voice in their own government.
The difficulty lies, of course, in putting yourself in the other fellow’s place, in having some appreciation of what it means to be the victim of prejudice and injustice, to be wronged without the power to remedy the wrong. That Mr. Wilson is unable to visualize this, we repeat, the more disappointing because there are so many injured persons with whom he does sympathize so understandingly. His unusual vision and imagination leave him, however, when it comes to disenfranchisement of women and to permitting his subordinates to inflict indignities upon American citizens in the immediate vicinity of the White House. If he could only be one of the submerged 10 per cent. of our people in Washington for forty-eight hours he could never have palliated the wrong done, as he is reported to have yesterday, by saying that segregation was enforces for the comfort and best interests of both races, in order to overcome friction. He would know then that it makes neither for the comfort nor for the best interests of the races, but invariably leads to added friction and creates deep and lasting unhappiness among the segregated. This problem has vexed him and caused him heartache more than once in his Administration, and it will not cease to plague him until he lays down the law that sets up equality of treatment of all employees in the Government service.
Again, Mr. Wilson is reported to have resented Mr. Trotter’s statement that if this discrimination were not ended, the negroes who voted for him would have declared that this was “political blackmail.” But this is the time-honored American way of showing disapproval of an elected official’s conduct. When Mr. Wilson was a candidate for President in 1912, he declared: “Should I become President of the United States, they (the colored people) may count upon me for absolute fair dealing and for everything which I could assist in advancing the interest of their race in the United States.” On the strength of this many colored people and their white friends advocated Mr. Wilson’s cause, who would rather have cut off their hands than have aided Mr. Wilson if they had known that he was intending to draw the color line in the departments upon the excuse that there is a certain point in the relations of the races where friction must occur. To them that is neither absolute fair dealing nor advancing their cause, but putting it back, because it sets the stamp of government approval upon color prejudice. To expect after this that the problem can be kept out of politics, as Mr. Wilson is quoted as urging is to expect the impossible.
With Mr. Wilson’s feelings as to the ultimate solution of the negro problem we are not to-day concerned. He may or may not have a constructive programme to suggest. The issue is simply whether a hateful East Indian caste shall be established in Washington or not. We had supposed, after the investigations of last winter, that the vicious policy had been checked; we understood that it was to be abandoned gradually. In numerous instances the Jim-Crowing had, we know, been stopped. The more discouraging is it to find the President apparently upholding what the World justly calls the “foolish indiscretions of members of his Cabinet.” There was no genuine complaint as to the conditions in Washington. Colored and white employees had worked side by side for fifty years. Some of them had been appointed by Grover Cleveland- one of his appointees to high place being the father of Mr. Trotter, a veteran of the Fifty-fifth Massachusetts. But the Wilson Administration went out of its way to create the issue it now deplores, and cannot see a way clear to admitting [end]
Original Format
Newspaper Article
Files
Collection
Citation
The Washington Post, “The President and Segregation,” c. 1914 November, CS31A, Race and Segregation Collection, Woodrow Wilson Presidential Library & Museum, Staunton, Virginia.