The President (1915)
It is difficult to see how any clear-minded American can longer doubt the insincerity of President Wilson so far as the American Negro is concerned. With those of us who were most determined to keep our faith in the President the doubt has been growing steadily. At first, with his clear utterances to colored delegations and his letters during the campaign, it seemed impossible that so high-minded and scholarly a man could repudiate these plain, straightforward words. If they had been voiced by the ordinary type of politician we should justly have regarded them with suspicion; but here was a man who, despite his southern birth, his academic exclusiveness, and his presidency of a Negro-hating institution, nevertheless seemed so fine a type of cultured and honest American that there appeared absolutely no reason for doubting that he would fulfill his word to the letter and treat the Negro with absolute fairness.
When, at the very outset of his administration he failed to do this, we put the blame on his southern subordinates and pressed him for some clear, outward sign or word which would prove his honesty of purpose. We were fed on quiet assurances of good will, unaccompanied by any supporting action. Finally, we had the extraordinary declaration of national “Jim-Crow” policy made to Mr. Trotter, but made as we hoped under such stress of feeling as to be not altogether taken at face value.
When, however, Mr. Wilson, after careful thought and preparation summons before him The University Commission on -Southern Race Questions and gives utterances to the utterly banal assertion that we must “know the needs” of the Negro and “sympathetically help him” with the amazing qualification of restricting help to “sensible” lines—all this shows neither the statesman nor the sincere man, but the man who either not daring or not caring to utter clear, strong words for or against ten million people, contents himself with shifty and unmeaning platitudes. The whole affair is one of the most grievous disappointments that a disappointed people must bear.
Citation: Du Bois, W.E.B. 1915. “The President.” The Crisis. 9(4):181.