Woodrow Wilson was a prominent American scholar who served as president of Princeton University from 1902 to 1910, as governor of New Jersey from 1911 to 1913, and as the 28th president of the United States from 1913 to 1921. While Wilson's tenure is often noted for progressive achievement, his time in office was one of unprecedented regression in racial equality, with his presidency serving as the lowest point of the nadir of American race relations.O'Reilly, Kenneth (1997). "The Jim Crow Policies of Woodrow Wilson". The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education (17): 117–121. doi:10.2307/2963252. ISSN 1077-3711. JSTOR 2963252

Several historians have spotlighted examples in the public record of Wilson's racist policies and political appointments, such as the segregationists in his Cabinet. Other sources note Wilson defended segregation on "scientific" grounds in private, and describe him as a man who "loved to tell racist 'darky' jokes about black Americans."

Family and early life Thomas Woodrow Wilson was born and raised in the American South by parents who supported the Confederacy. His father, Joseph Wilson, supported slavery and served as a chaplain with the Confederate States Army. Wilson's father was one of the founders of the Southern Presbyterian Church in the United States (PCUS) after it split from the Northern Presbyterians in 1861 over the issue of secession. Joseph became a minister of the First Presbyterian Church in Augusta, Georgia, and the family lived there until 1870.

While it is unclear whether the Wilsons ever owned slaves, the Presbyterian Church, as part of the compensation for his father's services as a pastor, provided slaves to attend to the Wilson family. According to Wilson, his earliest memory was of playing in his front yard as a three year old, hearing a passerby announce with disgust that Abraham Lincoln had been elected president, and that a war was coming.O'Toole, Patricia (2018). The Moralist: Woodrow Wilson and the World He Made. Simon & Schuster. .

Wilson's views as an academic Wilson was an apologist for slavery and the southern redemption movement; he was also one of the nation's foremost promoters of lost cause mythology. At Princeton, Wilson used his authority to actively discourage the admission of African Americans.

Prior to entering politics, Wilson was one of the most highly regarded academics in America. Wilson's published works and area of scholarship focused on American history. Though this fact received less attention both during and after Wilson's academic career, much of his writings are overtly sympathetic towards slavery, the confederacy and redeemer movements. One of Wilson's books, History of the American People, includes such observations and was used as source material for The Birth of a Nation, a 1915 film that portrayed the Ku Klux Klan as a benevolent force. Quotes from Wilson's History of the American People used for the film include:

However, Wilson had harsh words about the gap between the original goals of the KKK and what it had evolved into.

Congressional Government, another highly regarded civic publication of Wilson's, includes a strong condemnation of Reconstruction era policies. Wilson refers to the time period as being characterized by "Congressional despotism", a time when both states' rights and the system of checks and balances were disregarded. Wilson specifically criticized efforts to protect voting rights for African Americans and rulings by federal judges against state courts that refused to empanel black jurors. According to Wilson, congressional leaders had acted out of idealism, displaying "blatant disregard of the child-like state of the Negro and natural order of life", thus endangering American democracy as a whole.Skowronek, S. (2006), The Reassociation of Ideas and Purposes: Racism, Liberalism, and the American Political Tradition, p. 391.

In his lengthy works on American history, Wilson did not cover the institution of slavery in great detail. However, when he did discuss the issue, his views were apologetic towards the institution, at least as it existed in the rural south during the Antebellum period. Wilson described himself as an opponent of both slavery and the Confederacy, though based solely on the grounds that neither would in the long term prove beneficial for the southern economy. The idea that holding another human being in bondage as chattel was inherently immoral is absent from any of the Wilson's discussion on the subject: on the contrary, Wilson described slavery as a benevolent state for Negros, whose white masters looked after their "comfort and welfare" and "meted out justice fairly".Gerstle, 103. According to Wilson, domestic slaves received "affection and indulgence" from their masters. Though Wilson admits some masters could be neglectful, he maintained that by and large slave owners acted "responsibly and dutifully" towards their inherently "indolent" field slaves, "who often did not earn their keep".

President of Princeton In 1902, the board of trustees of Princeton University selected Wilson to be the school's next president.Heckscher (1991), p. 110. Wilson invited only one African American guest (out of an estimated 150) to attend his installation ceremony, Booker T. Washington.Gerstle, 106. Though most accounts agree Wilson respected Washington, he would not allow him to be housed on campus with a member of the faculty; such arrangements had been made for all of the white guests coming from out of town to attend the ceremony. Wilson also refused to invite Washington to either of the two dinner parties hosted by him and his wife, Ellen, on the evening following the event.Gerstle, 106–107.

Wilson appointed the first Jew and the first Catholic to the faculty and helped liberate the board from domination by conservative Presbyterians.Heckscher (1991), p. 115. Despite these reforms and being generally viewed as a success in his administrative role, Wilson used his position at Princeton to exclude African Americans from attendance. At the time, opportunities for higher education were limited for African Americans; though a handful of mostly elite, Northern schools did admit black students, few colleges and universities accepted black students prior to the twentieth century. Most African Americans able to receive higher education did so at HBCUs such as Howard University, but by the early 1900s, virtually all Ivy League schools had begun admitting small numbers of black students. In the years leading up to Wilson's tenure as president of Princeton, the school had taken "baby steps" towards integration, with a small but slowly increasing number of African Americans permitted to study at the graduate schools in varying capacities. Wilson did not immediately put an end to this practice, but he refused to allow it to extend or expand, and only one African American student received a degree during his tenure.

In 1903, Theodore Roosevelt appointed William Crum, an African American Republican, as a customs officer for the port of Charleston, South Carolina. Wilson, like many white Southerners, bitterly opposed Crum's appointment based on his race. During his remarks before a Princeton alumni group, Wilson made a vulgar joke, the punchline of which called Crum a "coon", saying that President Roosevelt "would put a 'coon' in it".Gerstle, 105.

During the eight years that Wilson served as president of Princeton from 1902 to 1910, his perspective on race does not appear to have evolved; campus facilities remained segregated, and no African Americans were hired as faculty or admitted as undergraduate students during his tenure. In 1909, Wilson received a letter from a young African American man interested in applying to attend Princeton; Wilson had his assistant write back promptly that "it is altogether inadvisable for a colored man to enter Princeton".Gerstle, 107 Wilson eventually came to include in his justification for refusing to admit African American students that Princeton had never done so in the past though he knew such claims to be false. By the end of his time as president at Princeton, Wilson had taken steps to erase from the public record that African Americans had ever attended or instructed at Princeton though neither was true. Princeton college did not admit a single black student until 1947,Gerstle, 107. becoming the last Ivy League institution to racially integrate.

Modern re-assessment In the 21st century, there have been growing calls to reappraise Wilson's legacy because of his views on race. During a debate over the removal of Confederate monuments in the wake of the Charleston church shooting, some people demanded the removal of Wilson's name from institutions affiliated with Princeton due to his administration's segregation of government offices. On June 26, 2020, Princeton University removed Wilson's name from its public policy school due to his "racist thinking and policies". The Princeton University Board of Trustees voted to remove Wilson's name from the university's School of Public and International Affairs, changing the name to the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs. The board also accelerated the retirement of the name of a soon-to-be-closed residential college, changing the name from Wilson College to First College. However, the board did not change the name of the university's highest honor for an undergraduate alumnus or alumna, the Woodrow Wilson Award, because it was the result of a gift. The board stated that when the university accepted that gift, it took on a legal obligation to name the prize for Wilson. Also in 2020 the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation renamed to The Institute for Citizens & Scholars.

1912 presidential election

Following a brief but highly praised stint as the Governor of New Jersey from 1910 to 1912, Wilson became the surprise Democratic nominee for president in 1912. The 1912 presidential election was unique; the Republican incumbent, William Howard Taft, narrowly secured his party's nomination after being challenged for it by former president Theodore Roosevelt. After this, Roosevelt decided he would run anyway and with his supporters formed the Progressive Party. In the fifty years prior, Democrats had won the presidency only twice; the split in the Republican Party made Wilson's candidacy far more viable than originally assumed.

After decades of loyal support, by 1912, many African Americans had grown disillusioned with the Republican Party and its record of failure on civil rights. This view was particularly true with regards to Taft, whose campaign barely acknowledged the black community, in part to avoid alienating southern whites, whom Taft mistakenly believed could finally be won over by a Republican candidate. At first, many prominent African Americans, including Booker T. Washington, lent their support instead to the Progressive Party candidate, Teddy Roosevelt. Roosevelt's own record towards the black community while in office was suspect, however. Roosevelt's standing with the black community, already vulnerable, was irreparably harmed after the Progressive Party excluded southern black delegates from participating at their 1912 convention.