When I ask my college students to tell me what they recall about President
Wilson, they respond with enthusiasm. They say that Wilson led our country
reluctantly into World War I and after the war led the struggle nationally and
internationally to establish the League of Nations. They associate Wilson with
progressive causes like women’s suffrage. A handful of students recall the
Wilson administration’s Palmer raids against left-wing unions. But my students
seldom know or speak about two antidemocratic policies that Wilson carried
out: his racial segregation of the federal government and his military
interventions in foreign countries.
Among the progressive-era reforms with which students often credit Woodrow
Wilson is women’s suffrage. Although women did receive the right to vote
during Wilson’s administration, the president was at first unsympathetic. He
had suffragists arrested; his wife detested them. Public pressure, aroused by
hunger strikes and other actions of the movement, convinced Wilson that to
oppose women’s suffrage was politically unwise. Textbooks typically fail to