Extraordinary Isolation? Woodrow Wilson and the Civil Rights Movement

This article explores the contentious and dynamic relationship between Woodrow Wilson and a nascent, diverse civil rights movement from 1912 to 1919. The pivotal relationship between Wilson and the early civil rights movement emerged out of two concurrent and related political developments: the incr...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Studies in American political development 2017-10, Vol.31 (2), p.193-217
Main Authors: Jacobs, Nicholas F., Milkis, Sidney M.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
20th century
Activism
Activists
African Americans
American history
Civil rights movements
Collective action
Management
Migration
Objectives
Political activism
Political leadership
Political science
Politics
Power
Presidents
Race
Race relations
Reforms
Riots
Roosevelt, Theodore (1858-1919)
Social activism
Social movement organizations
Social movements
Strategies
Timing
Wilson, Woodrow (1856-1924)
World War I
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Summary:This article explores the contentious and dynamic relationship between Woodrow Wilson and a nascent, diverse civil rights movement from 1912 to 1919. The pivotal relationship between Wilson and the early civil rights movement emerged out of two concurrent and related political developments: the increasing centrality of presidential administration in the constitutional order and the growing national aspirations of political strategies and goals among reform activists. Not only do we illustrate an early form of social movement politics that was largely antithetical to the administration's objectives, but we also trace how the strategies adopted by civil rights leaders were contingent on an early, still-to-be institutionalized administrative presidency. We highlight Wilson's involvement in the racial unrest that emerged from the debut of the film The Birth of a Nation and in the race riots that accompanied the Great Migration and World War I in his second term. These early twentieth-century episodes legitimized a form of collective action and helped to recast the modern presidency as an institution that both collaborated and competed with social movement organizations to control the timing and conditions of change.
ISSN:0898-588X
1469-8692
DOI:10.1017/S0898588X1700013X