A lesson learned from WOODROW WILSON: THE LIGHT WITHDRAWN, by Christopher Cox

Sometimes your heroes are not who you thought they were--and you have to make peace with that. 

    In this blogging adventure I've embarked on reviewing all the History books I read, we've encountered various historical figures, some of whom were more heroic and some of whom were more villainous. Woodrow Wilson occupies a unique place which actually teaches us a lot in the various battles we fight today over how to teach American History to students. When I was a kid, Wilson was largely taught to high schoolers as a heroic president. The culmination of the Progressive Movement, Wilson signed into place laws that people had been fighting for decades (child labor laws, banking and corporate regulations, workers' comp laws, etc). He also happened to be President when the nation finally achieved women's suffrage, which he eventually endorsed. He led the nation to victory in World War I. Above all, he alone amongst the World War I victors realized what disasters and horrors awaited the world if that war did not produce a fair peace at its end, and he fought for the U.S. to lead a League of Nations that might have prevented the rise of figures like Hitler. This was the story told to myself and several generations of high school students, and it is the story that many people would like to still be taught today--America and American Presidents in general are international good guys, constantly fighting for what's right and to make the world a better place, and we need to focus on all their achievements and good intentions. Alas, the more I grew up and read about Wilson, the less I actually liked him. As professional historians had known for decades, teaching Wilson as a hero required ignoring two pretty problematic elements--his general hatred of black people, and his contempt for anything relating to feminism. 
 

    In his problematic but fascinating new book, Christopher Cox focuses on those elements of Wilson over all others, arguing that they were the core beliefs that defined the world for Wilson and everything else was secondary. Cox has an ax to grind against Wilson, to the extent that he virtually ignores all of Wilson's real achievements, and argues that Wilson needs to be seen as a great villain of the era. And while I would argue that a more complete understanding of Wilson and all the good and bad he pushed is needed, Cox certainly paints a compelling portrait of a man who only endorsed women's suffrage at the last possible moment (after years of cracking down on their movement), and who refused to aid them when presidential support might have made a real difference. Wilson defenders have long argued that his racism was a secondary element of his larger progressive vision for world change; Cox points out how much harder it is to make that argument when virtually all of Wilson's best friends and political allies (not to mention his two wives) were raging white supremacists who played a huge role in establishing the systematic Jim Crow segregation system. Wilson and his allies' whitewashing of the Civil War and the Confederacy damaged our understanding of the struggles of that era for decades, and a wave of ugly racial violence permeated Wilson's entire presidency, complete with a massive revival of a KKK that had been dormant for decades. 

    I would argue that Cox is too harsh on Wilson simply in the sense of ignoring his real achievements; there's barely a mention of the Progressive wave of bills he fought for and signed, nor his real dream of a better world in the wake of World War I, as incomplete and problematic as it could be. That said, I do remember feeling a little bit hoodwinked at the fact that Wilson had been sold to me as a heroic president when I was a kid. Even Wilson's biggest defenders would acknowledge that he could be a cold and uncompromising man, harsh and unforgiving to anyone who disagreed with him (hence the brutal treatment meted out to suffragettes and WWI protestors), and sabotaging his own visions with his utter refusal to work with political opponents to find common ground. Cox is absolutely right that if we refuse to teach our children about the mistakes and flaws of men like Wilson, then we are leaving them utterly unequipped to confront the realities of a world where we often try to do the right thing, but sometimes are not always the good guys in the story.

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