Woodrow Wilson

He was Tommy Wilson until his mid-twenties, and he could not read until about the age of 10 — weak eyes, possibly dyslexia, and a father who drilled him aloud instead. That father was a Presbyterian minister who helped organize the church of the Confederacy and whose congregation leased enslaved labor rather than buying it. Wilson's first memory was standing at the parsonage gate in Augusta, Georgia, at three, hearing a man announce in disgust that Lincoln had been elected and there would be a war. He quit Davidson sick, finished Princeton 38th in a class of 167, quit law school sick, practiced in Atlanta, hated it, and took a doctorate at Johns Hopkins instead.

Bryn Mawr, Wesleyan, a Princeton professorship, the Princeton presidency in 1902, a war over eating clubs and a graduate college that he lost, the New Jersey governorship in 1910, and the White House 26 months after that. Nobody has ever come off a campus that fast. Then the Federal Reserve, the antitrust laws, a world war, Versailles, the League and the stroke. BriefHistory carries all of it. What it cannot carry is what he did to the people who worked for the government he ran.

Within a month of the inauguration his postmaster general urged him to segregate the federal offices, and Wilson left it to each department head to do as he liked. By the end of 1913 the Post Office, the Treasury, the Navy and Commerce had divided workrooms, lunchrooms and lavatories by race. From 1914 the Civil Service Commission required a photograph with every application, on the stated ground of preventing fraud. Of the 17 Black supervisors Taft had appointed, Wilson kept two. An economic study published in 2021 put the resulting widening of the Black-white federal earnings gap at between 3.4 and 6.9 percentage points. In 1915 he screened The Birth of a Nation at the White House and privately congratulated its director.

He died in an upstairs bedroom of a house on S Street in February 1924, and lies at Washington National Cathedral, the only president buried in the capital. For most of the century that followed he sat in the top 10 of nearly every survey of historians, credited with the shape of the United Nations even though the Senate had killed his own version of it. Then the rest of the record caught up with the League. Princeton reviewed his name in 2016 and kept it, then removed it in June 2020 from its public policy school and a residential college. The foundation bearing his name renamed itself the same year. His birthplace in Staunton is still a museum.

Woodrow Wilson's life against the full span of the corpus.

• Congressional Government book
  His doctoral dissertation, written before he had ever watched Congress work 1885
• A History of the American People book
  Five volumes, later quoted approvingly in the title cards of The Birth of a Nation 1902
• Federal Reserve Act law
  The central banking system the country had gone without for 77 years 1913
• Clayton Antitrust Act law
  It exempted labor unions from antitrust prosecution 1914
• The Fourteen Points speech
  Delivered to Congress on January 8, 1918 1918
• Covenant of the League of Nations other
  He drafted much of it and the Senate refused it twice 1919

• 1873 aged ~17 Enters Davidson College and leaves within a year in poor health
• 1879 aged ~23 Graduates from Princeton 38th in a class of 167
• June 24, 1885 aged 28 Marries Ellen Louise Axson, a painter
• 1886 aged ~30 Takes a doctorate at Johns Hopkins No other president has held one.
• 1902 aged ~46 Elected president of Princeton
• 1913 aged ~57 Lets his department heads segregate the federal workforce Workrooms, lunchrooms and lavatories were divided by race.
• August 6, 1914 aged 57 Ellen dies of Bright's disease in the White House He remarried 16 months later.
• October 2, 1919 aged 62 Suffers a stroke that leaves him partly paralyzed He held the office for another 17 months.
• February 3, 1924 aged 67 Dies at his house on S Street in Washington

• Louis Brandeis 1856–1941
  Justice and reform lawyer who advanced privacy, free speech, and progressive regulation. appointed
• Eugene V. Debs 1855–1926
  Socialist Party leader who ran for president five times from prison and championed labor rights. prosecuted
• W.E.B. Du Bois 1868–1963
  Sociologist, historian, and civil rights activist who was the first African American to earn a Harvard doctorate. opposed by
• Charles Evans Hughes 1862–1948
  Chief justice, governor, and secretary of state who guided the Court through major New Deal constitutional conflicts. defeated
• Ida B. Wells 1862–1931
  Journalist and anti-lynching crusader whose investigative reporting exposed racial terror in the South. opposed by
• Henry Cabot Lodge 1850–1924
  Senate leader who blocked American entry into the League of Nations after the First World War. blocked by
• Henry Cabot Lodge 1850–1924
  Senate leader who blocked American entry into the League of Nations after the First World War. defeated by