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Extraordinary Isolation? Woodrow Wilson and the Civil Rights Movement

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 November 2017

Nicholas F. Jacobs  and
Sidney M. Milkis
Nicholas F. Jacobs*
Affiliation:
University of Virginia
Sidney M. Milkis
Affiliation:
University of Virginia
*
Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

This article explores the contentious and dynamic relationship between Woodrow Wilson and a nascent, diverse civil rights movement from 1912 to 1919. The pivotal relationship between Wilson and the early civil rights movement emerged out of two concurrent and related political developments: the increasing centrality of presidential administration in the constitutional order and the growing national aspirations of political strategies and goals among reform activists. Not only do we illustrate an early form of social movement politics that was largely antithetical to the administration's objectives, but we also trace how the strategies adopted by civil rights leaders were contingent on an early, still-to-be institutionalized administrative presidency. We highlight Wilson's involvement in the racial unrest that emerged from the debut of the film The Birth of a Nation and in the race riots that accompanied the Great Migration and World War I in his second term. These early twentieth-century episodes legitimized a form of collective action and helped to recast the modern presidency as an institution that both collaborated and competed with social movement organizations to control the timing and conditions of change.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in American Political Development , Volume 31 , Issue 2 , October 2017 , pp. 193 - 217
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2017 

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85. All of these newspaper accounts come from clippings Dixon sent Wilson on March 5, 1915—two days after the New York premier.

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89. “Why ‘The Birth of a Nation’ Is Shown,” Boston Globe, April 9, 1915 (morning edition), 15.

90. “Race Riot at Theater,” Washington Post, April 18, 1915, p. 2; “Birth of Nation Causes Near-Riot,” Boston Sunday Globe, April 18, 1915, p. 1; “Boston Race Leaders Fight Birth of a Nation,” Chicago Defender, April 24, 1915, p. 4.

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94. Edward Douglass White, the chief justice of the Supreme Court, was the first to bring these rumors to the White House's attention on April 5. White's name had been used as a word-of-mouth endorsement of the film, and he suggested to an acquaintance that, “if the owners were wise they would stop the rumors,” lest he denounce the film publicly. Other reports of this rumor came from members of the White House Correspondents Association, forwarding letters from their respective readers as to the president's true feelings. See White House Correspondents’ Association to Joseph Tumulty, April 20, 1915. Woodrow Wilson Papers, Series 4, Reel 332, Case File 2247, Library of Congress.

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97. One of the major African American dailies, the Chicago Defender provided exhaustive coverage of these protests across the United States and into Canada. In no less than thirty-three major American cities did the Defender report instances of citizen protest—from May 1915 in Detroit to June 1916 in Pensacola, Florida. Many were unsuccessful, although some citizen groups managed to cut some of the most vitriolic scenes from the film. However, the film was banned—albeit temporarily—from production in Chicago (the next stop after the Boston premiers). The Defender also reports instances of “extralegal” protest: Reels of the film were destroyed in Mason City, Iowa, in December 1915, and large demonstrations turned into episodic violence when the film premiered in Philadelphia that September of the same year. The Defender's own view of its role in perpetuating the fight is most clearly evoked in an editorial in the September 11, 1915, edition, p. 8.

98. Fighting a Vicious Film: Protest against “The Birth of a Nation” (Boston, MA: Boston Branch of the NAACP, Library of Congress Collection of Books by Colored Authors, Rare Book Collection, 1915), 29.

99. “Fifty-Fifty in Presidential Race,” Afro-American, September 2, 1916, p. 1.

100. The Crisis, October 1916. See also, “A Negro Party,” Afro-American, October 7, 1916, p. 4.

101. “The Great Question,” Afro-American, November 18, 1916, p. 4.

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108. “Race Rioters Fire East St. Louis and Shoot or Hang Many Negroes,” New York Times, July 3, 1917. See also “Labor Rivalry Behind Trouble Leading to Riot,” Chicago Tribune, July 3, 1917; “Mob Shoots and Burns Negroes by Scores in East St. Louis Riots,” Washington Post, July 3, 1917; “The Riot in East St. Louis,” The Crisis, August 1917.

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116. New York Globe, August 7, 1917. This clipping is attached to the letter Cosey sent Wilson on August 9, 1917, Woodrow Wilson Papers, Reel 230, Library of Congress.

117. “Wilson Pledge to Negroes,” Washington Post, August 17, 1917, p. 2.

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130. Despite claims to the contrary, Wilson was not the first president to publicly denounce lynching. After Booker T. Washington personally called on Theodore Roosevelt to make a speech against mob violence in a letter on February 6, 1902, the president responded to his request a few months later in a Memorial Day address at Arlington National Ceremony. In a speech principally concerned with American occupation of the Philippines, Roosevelt inserted an entire paragraph to distinguish the actions of the U.S. military from the acts of deplorable injustice taking place in the South: “Is it only in the army in the Philippines that Americans sometimes commit deeds that cause all other Americans to regret? No! From time to time there occur in our country, to the deep and lasting shame of our people, lynchings carried on under circumstances of inhuman cruelty and barbarity, cruelty infinitely worse than any that has ever been committed by our troops in the Philippines; worse to the victims, and far more brutalizing to those guilty of it. The men who fail to condemn these lynchings, and yet clamor about what has been done in the Philippines, are indeed guilty of neglecting the beam in their own eye while taunting their brother about the mote in his.” For the full remarks, see Theodore Roosevelt, Memorial Day Address (May 30, 1902), Arlington National Cemetery, Arlington, Virginia, Theodore Roosevelt Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress.

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137. “Telegram Sent Wilson, Senators, Congressmen,” Chicago Defender, December 8, 1917, p. 10.

138. Moton, Robert Russa to Wilson, Woodrow, June 15, 1918, in The Papers of Woodrow Wilson, vol. 48, ed. Link, Arthur S. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1978), 323Google Scholar.

139. Wilson, Woodrow to Tumulty, Joseph Patrick, June 13, 1918, in The Papers of Woodrow Wilson, vol. 48, ed. Link, Arthur S. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1978), 302Google Scholar.

140. See, for example, Walton, Lester Alger to Tumulty, Joseph Patrick, June 13, 1918, in The Papers of Woodrow Wilson, vol. 48, ed. Link, Arthur S. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1978), 302Google Scholar; Wilson, Woodrow to Moton, R. R., June 18, 1918, in The Papers of Woodrow Wilson, vol. 48, ed. Link, Arthur S. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1978), 346Google Scholar; Dyer, Leonidas to Wilson, Woodrow, July 23, 1918, in The Papers of Woodrow Wilson, vol. 49, ed. Link, Arthur S. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1978), 61–62 Google Scholar.

141. Leonidas Dyer to Woodrow Wilson, July 23, 1918,” 61–62.

142. Wilson, Woodrow, “A Statement to the American People” July 26, 1918, in The Papers of Woodrow Wilson, vol. 49, ed. Link, Arthur S. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1978), 97–98 Google Scholar.

143. “President Wilson's Proclamation Denouncing Lynching,” Afro-American, August 2, 1918, p. 1.

144. “President Wilson against Mob Rule,” Chicago Defender, August 3, 1918, p. 1.

145. “Our President Has Spoken,” Chicago Defender, August 3, 1918, p. 16.

146. Miroff, “Presidential Leverage Over Social Movements,” 14.

147. Woodrow Wilson, Constitutional Government, 68.

148. Riley, The Presidency; Sanders, “Presidents and Social Movements.”

149. Arnesen, “Reconsidering the ‘Long Civil Rights Movement,’” 265–88.

150. “Wilson Backs Amendment for Woman Suffrage,” New York Times, January 10, 1918, p. 1.

151. Stone, “Mr. Wilson's First Amendment,” 213.

152. Francis, Civil Rights and the Making of the Modern American State, 171.

153. Daniels was secretary of the navy during Wilson's two terms as president. FDR, famously following in his cousin's footsteps, served as assistant secretary of the navy under Daniels. Daniels's private diary informs us of the earliest conversations that took place inside the White House over the segregation of the civil service. In a letter to FDR, Daniels expresses Wilson's dismay for how he handled Trotter's second invitation to the White House, admitting to have “lost my temper and played the fool.” Josephus Daniels to Franklin Delano Roosevelt, June 10, 1933, F. D. Roosevelt Papers, Official File 237, Papers as President: The President's Official File, Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library & Museum.

154. Langston Hughes, “Poem for a Man: To A. Phillip Randolph on Achieving His Seventieth Year,” April 15, 1959, in The Papers of A. Philip Randolph, ed. John H. Bracey and August Meier (Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, DC). As Hughes exalted in this poem honoring Randolph on his seventieth birthday: “[He] played the checkered game of King jump King. And jump[ed] a president.”

155. On the development of a racial realignment during the New Deal era, see Schickler, Eric, Racial Realignment: The Transformation of American Liberalism, 1932–1965 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2016)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

156. Milkis, Sidney M., The President and the Parties: The Transformation of the American Party System Since the New Deal (New York: Oxford University Press, 1983)Google Scholar.

157. Milkis et al., “Rallying Force.”

158. Indeed, Neustadt's analysis of modern presidential power is the intellectual heir, and analytical extension of Wilson's political science. As Neustadt writes, “A President may retain the liberty, in Woodrow Wilson's phrase, ‘to be as big a man as he can.’ But nowadays he cannot be as small as he might like.” Neustadt, Richard E., Presidential Power and the Modern Presidents: The Politics of Leadership from Roosevelt to Reagan (New York: The Free Press, 1990/1960), 6Google Scholar.

159. Wilson, Congressional Government, 74.