Wilson and Race

Wilson and Race

Unknown

CS33

c. 1914

Fragment of clipping from unidentified newspaper about segregation in the federal government under Woodrow Wilson.

Library of Congress
Wilson Papers, Series 4, 152A Reel 231, Manuscript Division

Woodrow Wilson Presidential Library & Museum

Trotter, William Monroe, 1872-1934

African-Americans--segregation

Althea Cupo

Maria Matlock

English

Digital copy acquired from federal archives by previous WWPL Archivist, Heidi Hackford.

government...the Cabinet have established departments; and, as the President well knows, insolent conduct is not confined to the members of any particular race. The President should have foreseen this unfortunate issue when Mr. McAdoo and Mr. Burleson were carrying their color-line theories into democratic government. Mr. Wilson told the committee that there had been no discrimination in the comforts and surroundings of the negro clerks, but explained that "he had been informed by officials that the segregation had been started to avoid friction between the races, and not with the object of injuring the negroes." Th. President failed to explain, nevertheless why no such rule had been considered necessary until Mr. Burleson and Mr. McAdoo got into the Cabinet.

For nearly half a century white clerks | and negro clerks have worked side by ie side in the departments of Washington, under Republican and under Democratic Presidents. The World keeps itself fairly well informed about Washington affairs, but the first it ever heard of this alleged friction to which Mr. Wilson refers was when Mr. McAdoo began his Jim-Crow proceedings in the Treasury Department.

The President thinks that this is not a political question, but he is wrong. Anything that is unjust, discriminating, and un-American in government is certain to be a political question. Servants of the United States Government are servants of the United States Government, regardless of race or color, For several years a negro has been Collector of Internal Revenue in New York. He never found it necessary to segregate the white employees of his department to prevent “friction"; yet he would have had quite as much right to do so as Mr. McAdoo had to segregate the negro employees of the Treasury in Washington.

While the Democrats of the country have been trying to solve certain great problems of government, a few Southern members of the Cabinet have been allowed to exploit their petty local prejudice at the expense of the party's reputation for exact justice.

Whether the President thinks so or not, the segregation rule was promulgated as a deliberate discrimination against negro employees.

Worse still, it is a small, mean, petty discrimination, and Mr. Wilson ought to have set his heel upon this presumptuous Jim-Crow government the moment it was established. He ought to set his heel upon it now. It is a reproach to his administration and to the great political principles which he represents.

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