Some have hailed Woodrow Wilson, the 28th President of the United States, but those who know history, appreciate the enormous backwards step his Presidency was in relation to human rights.

Wilson’s history is quite interesting.

His father, Reverend Dr. Joseph Ruggles Wilson, was originally from Steubenville, Ohio, where his grandfather published a newspaper, The Western Herald and Gazette, that was pro-tariff and abolitionist.

Reverend Wilson was so pro slavery he and his wife moved South in 1851. He bought property, owned slaves and set up a Sunday school for them. This is an examples of how Christianity was used to promote and maintain slavery.

Thomas Woodrow was born in 1856 and often mentioned his earliest memory was of standing beside Robert E. Lee and hearing that Abraham Lincoln had been elected President, and being aware that war was coming.

He and his family were supporters of the Confederacy, and wounded soldiers were cared for at his father’s Church.

Despite being a slow learner, Woodrow became an academic, and was the president of Princeton University, 1902 – 1910. He discouraged blacks from even applying for admission.

Princeton did not admit its first black student until the 1940s.

When he became President of the United States 1912 -1920 he allowed his cabinet officials to establish official segregation in most federal government offices, in some departments for the first time since 1863, setting back racial equality fifty years, and planting the seeds of its perpetuation.

Wilson and his cabinet members fired many black Republican office holders but as a sop, appointed a few black Democrats to such posts, making it seem the blacks were fired for being Republicans.

W. E. B. Du Bois, a leader of the NAACP, had campaigned for Wilson. In 1918 he was offered an Army commission in charge of dealing with race relations; DuBois accepted, but he failed his Army physical and did not serve.

Wilson’s courting of DuBois was to misdirect, so that leaders, as Marcus Garvey, would not have an ‘easy’ target.

Dubois did not realise he was being ‘played.’

Wilson was a supporter of segregation, and worked hard to ensure that wherever the ‘wall’ had been knocked down, he would replace it. His administration imposed full racial segregation in Washington and hounded from office considerable numbers of black federal employees.

When a delegation of blacks protested these actions, Wilson told them that “Segregation is not a humiliation but a benefit, and ought to be so regarded by you gentlemen.”

In 1914, he told the New York Times, “If the colored people made a mistake in voting for me, they ought to correct it.”

Woodrow Wilson’s History of the American People explained the Ku Klux Klan of the late 1860s as the natural outgrowth of Reconstruction, a lawless reaction to a lawless period.

Wilson noted that the Klan “began to attempt by intimidation what they were not allowed to attempt by the ballot or by any ordered course of public action.”

Wilson’s work critique contributed to the intellectual/historical justification for the racist policies/reactions of the 20th century American South.

His words were used in the early film; The Birth of a Nation. “The white men were roused by a mere instinct of self-preservation… until at last there sprung into existence a Great Ku Klux Klan a vertiable empire of the South, to protect the Souther country.”

Wilson’s wife, Edith, was unapologetically racist.

Wilson was anti-immigrant, and wrote much on the subject. However, after he entered politics in 1910, he Wilson worked to integrate immigrants into the Democratic party, into the army, and into American life, clearly an astute political move.

He lied to Irish-Americans to gain their support for America’s involvement on the side of the British in WWI. His contempt for them so great he refused to meet Éamon de Valera, the President of Dáil Éireann (the revolutionary Irish Republic), during the latter’s 1919 visit to the United States.

Wilson began the first effective draft in 1917. imposed an income tax, enacted the first federal drug prohibition, took over control of the railroads, and it was during his administration the democratic election of Senators took place. He also suppressed anti-war movements

Wilson spoke for National women’s suffrage, very late in his Second term. It came after years of pressure, protest, and publicity. Far from being a supporter of Women’s rights, he was a barrier.  That the franchise was extended to women during his administration is not something he can actually take credit for.

Although considered by many historians one of the ‘best’ American Presidents, his record needs to be analysed in relation to his stand on human rights.