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woodrow wilson library. we're pleased you could join us for another edition of ongoing speaker series. tonight's speaker not only has written a meticulously researched work on a transformational period of american history, but some of research was conducted right here at, the woodrow wilson presidential library. it is a reminder that our library serves as a resource for all scholars and researchers and for young folks in the audience. that includes to in that spirit, hosting speakers with diverse perspectives, those critical of our presidential exemplifies our commitment to open inquiry and honesty. the bpl is an educational institution that encourages thoughtful examination of the complex time and legacy of. woodrow wilson. as with all our speaker series programs, the views expressed by the speaker may or may not reflect the views of the woodrow wilson presidential library.

we welcome tonight's, speaker and look forward to the spirited conversation about an important and pivotal time our nation's history. none of our programs including the speaker series are possible. the support of our donors by supporting the people, you ensure that rigorous research happens here and that history is examined openly. your donation enriches understanding, encourages thoughtful and honors the spirit of inquiry essential to preserving in retain our shared history. one last bit of housekeeping. tonight's program will include a q&a at the end for friends on zoom. please your questions in the q&a function at the bottom of your screen. and we will ask as many of them as time allows. we wouldn't want those attending in person to be the only ones having fun. we are pleased. welcome. tonight, christopher cox, the woodrow wilson presidential

library and author and political history, and he is a senior scholar in residence at the university of california, irvine a life trustee of the university southern california chair of rhodes scholarship selection committee for southern california and the pacific, and a member of several nonprofit and for profit boards between two decades as a practicing lawyer, he served as chair of the homeland security committee in the u.s. house of representatives, chair of the u.s. securities and exchange commission, and associate counsel to the president. he has written for fortune the wall street journal, the new york times, forbes, the detroit news, the denver post, the washington, the los angeles times, and dozens of other publications. his new book, woodrow the light withdrawn, was released just last week. please join me in welcoming christopher.

thank you very much andrew. and you know, andrew's voice is so much better than mine that i'm going to explain a little bit why that's so. but i want to know right away. can you hear me in the back. it's okay. all right. oh, i have a paralyzed vocal cord and the voice still works. but it's not the voice that grew up with or that i was used having through middle age. so i'm still used to it. and you'll have to as well. no, but as mark twain once said about richard wagner's, it's not as bad as it. it's it's it's nothing to worry about. so andrew and and everybody that worked with here at the library couldn't have been more helpful. and courteous and friendly. all staff. but the woodrow wilson library and museum is a gem and. i hope that for people who can't

get here physically, some maybe from far away, that they understand much. the library museum are doing to put things online. not everything, of course, but but increasing amounts and it's really something. personally, i just have no end of thanks for all that you've done. when when i'm asked and i am thrilled that the spectacular collection of old but restored and enhanced now color photographs that i worked on with an artist in europe named jasinski for a couple of years and that simon schuster commissioned the book is now of the permanent collection of the wilson library. so people will get to enjoy those as well. speaking of photographs, before i launch into talking about the book and it's a 500 page book

with a lot of notes it and so going to touch the mountain or some of the important points, but nothing like the story of. but even before i start talking about the book, i want to take moment to show you some of it as well, because sometimes a picture tells more. a thousand words. like this, maybe you saw this ad in the new yorker. i don't know this guy is this looks like a regular armani ad of he looks like he could be any of the models at a new york event. but this picture is, not what it seems. oh, man. is an assassin. and at age 26, he was of attempted murder and subsequently executed. he was executed by hanging 159 years ago. and i teased you. he was never in armani model,

but. but he sure looks like he could be. he looks like he could be a young sitting with us here in the audience. i came across this picture in a simon schuster book. it was published, i think, in 2018 called the color of time. and it's a splendid book. highly recommend it. oh, the digital artist who performed that kind of restoration work on these old historic photos is his name, marina amaral. is from brazil. and she's one of the best in the world. one of the other pictures in her book that caught my attention because i was when this book came out already eight years into my research into women's suffrage, woodrow wilson, this picture of ebola in pankhurst, when she was being arrested in london in 1914 and first of a leading british suffragists of

when we think about those periods of time when, we think about wilson's time, we think about pankhurst time or, you know, go back to the civil war like picture that we just saw. we have images of dusty daguerreotypes, but those people did not live in black and white. they had blood in their cheeks and color in their eyes, just like all these people do. so it occurred to me should ask simon schuster, who was who became my publisher and the publisher of this book if we couldn't do the same thing with the wilson. and they said yes. and hence this transatlantic partnership that lasted few years. all of the photographs to be painstakingly research. because you have to get as close as possible to. what were the actual dyes used

in the clothing? what color was it translating? gray scale to color, scale is not you can't do that with an algorithm. so there's art as well as science in that. and with research you can help because. you can find out what kinds of dyes were being used for clothing at that time in that place. you can in museums and see pieces of furniture that are almost identical to what's in the picture and so on. that takes a lot of time, a lot of work of so let's go to one of the pictures that we actually chose, which actually reposes here in its original form. this is woodrow, i think favorite portrait of himself, judging by the number of times he autographed it for others others. it was taken in 1919 in the penultimate year of his two terms as president. well, american doughboys were

fighting in europe and before his debilitating series of seizures and strokes that tragically ended his presidency and three years later, his life. if you watch carefully, you will see how this 105 year old photograph begins to look like it was taken not in black and white a century ago, but in resolution color with. the latest iphone. we start to see that wilson's eyes are blue, gray. we see the the glasses that were hidden in the great bones before we see that unique typing and even the american flag pin. and most importantly, we see not an old man, which is what that photo kind of looked like, mostly because it was all black and white and dingy, dusty gray. but a man who was vibrant and of age. he was, in fact, 12 years younger than i am. and the time that this picture

taken. so we now to see him the way his contemporaries saw, i that wilson would be very still alive, a very happy that i chose this picture for the cover of the book because it is flattering and not all of the pictures that are extant of woodrow wilson are so flattering. there is, for example, this one of this wilson, one year younger age. nine on the golf course, he got the hat of and it is 1918 while the doughboys are fighting in europe. i said that about the other picture. that was 1919. they were no longer fighting in 1990. wilson on the golf course, was not a rare occasion. he to play almost every if he could on his doctor's for his

health and. he holds a record that will surely stand for all time. the way the modern presidency works. for the most rounds of golf by a u.s. president while in office, the conservative estimate is that he played 1200 rounds during his two terms and has really less than that because he wasn't playing much at the end. but what's most notable about this picture are his teeth teeth. i think one reason for his stern, professorial image is that he was shy about smiling in public. and you can see why this photograph, though, is an exception to. his rule and it shows why unlike teddy roosevelt, we remember woodrow wilson from his giant grin. so but this is also photographic evidence of serious gum disease

and rotted teeth. medical biographers have long believed that wilson suffered from hypertension in medicine, has linked hyper to periodontitis. so this condition can be added to a growing list of possible causes or contributors to his seizures. and and strokes near the end of his life. health issues are, of course, central to wilson story when he was forced to short his leg of nation's speaking tour in 1919. it was the beginning of the end for him. but he had a long history of chronic ailments. this is wilson at 19. beginning in his youth, he suffered from gastric disorders, from headaches, and they seemed

to worsen. he fell under stress of his name, by the way, at this time. was of that's he went by until he was out of college. he adopted the name woodrow o after he graduated from college because he thought it sounded more dignified. and it certainly has worked. woodrow wilson of rolls off the tongue. oh he we think, a freshman at the college new jersey when this picture was taken in college of new jersey. subsequently became princeton. it was his second time around as a college freshman. he had two years earlier been a freshman at davidson college. but he davidson after his freshman year there, he struggled at first. he to make the honor roll and worried himself sick as we infer from the letters to his mother

and her letters back, he was worried part that his classmates didn't him and she assured him that he was a favorite with everybody at home and he came home at at the college of new jersey. wilson also was not one of the honor men during his four years. he started. his four years at princeton as freshman over again. but his interests lie elsewhere. he was interested in things the student newspaper, the club. oh, he participated very much in the debating. and while he not particularly athletic, he was the student manager of the baseball team. so later on of his, we'll get to oh, when decided he didn't want to be law school it was in part

because academic life didn't have much to it just all this studying and he was from the first a very social person. but he was also a very political person. there. a 1912 campaign biography. he ran for president that said that wilson was, quote, known as a democrat of stout. from the moment he opened his mouth on campus and in his sprang from reconstruction, his experience and his family's experience during reconstruction. and there great dissatisfied action with republicans for wanting to give black men the vote. wilson is the last u.s. president to have grown with enslaved servants literally in his old household. the wilson family had been waited on by enslaved servants

here and in georgia. wilson's was a confederate chaplain with officer rank in a presbyterian minister who defended slavery in. his sermons. the father's influence on the son was, i think, unmistakable for princeton years after the civil war. tom is in arguments, his classmates always taking the southern and always getting quite bitter. two years after he graduated from college once again living in the south, then he really stayed a southerner, you know, until 28th year when he moved out altogether. but he always came back during the school prior to that. two years after he graduated from the college in new jersey, he wrote an article that he submitted to the new york evening post. and the article for the new york

evening post. he titled stray thoughts from the south. and it was his attempt to explain what was fundamentally with the republican party. he said that the republicans defying nature, the determination i'm quoting of the saxon of the south, that the -- race shall never again rule over them. was not unnatural. and it is unalterable. but republicans, he complained refused to recognize this. they believed, wilson said in ignorant suffrage, and they have declared to the world that there is difference between an american. freeman and an american slave, which may not be unmade by a mere act. congress in college wilson had already determined that he wanted a political career. and so it's not surprising that he was thought of as a partizan

democrat at this time, which he remained. specifically, he set his sights on being a senator. at first he thought he would be a senator. virginia and to that end, he thought that he should be a lawyer because that was the traditional path to becoming a senator. and so he attended the university of virginia law school. but as i was mentioning earlier, he couldn't put up with the burden of studying, as he put it, law law, law of poring over the mass of its technicolor these, he said disgusts me. there was no time in campus life for anything except law. and that is some of us know what law school is. so but afterward he then attempted to open law practice in atlanta without a degree that was a notice here. here is uva law school, by the

way. oh, and that the attempt at practicing law. oh it didn't matter that that he didn't have to agree because it was not that you could still take the bar exam be admitted locally. but it was a very un venture for him because we did it for about a year. and during that period of time he did not come up with a single client who paid him except his mother. so not surprisingly he gave that up within year or two. but one very notable and positive thing did happen, as i think a lot of people in this room know. during his brief time in georgia, he met his future wife, ellen axon, and they quickly began a two year engagement. but the couple ready to marry until he completed his education, found a job. in all, he spent about four

years after college trying to settle in something and at length what he decided he really wanted to do was return to school. and that at johns hopkins. his brief there and it was similarly brief to uva. was cut short when he changed mind about pursuing the ph.d. degree that he had set out to obtain. so once again he quit in his second year without completing either the reading requirements or the required dissertation, he wrote. ellen, i had given up conclude sidley he quit johns hopkins after the spring semester never to enroll again. and at the time the school told him if he wanted to come back he could return later for another year or two and then starting his dissertation and he turned that down. he chose not to. he did, however, make a lifelong

friend at johns hopkins a, fellow north carolinian. we have a photo of him. thomas wilson and dixon spent a fair amount of time together that first year when they were both students at johns hopkins and they had a fair amount in common. they were both the sons ministers who had kept slaves. both were raised by parents who believed that black people, not their social equals in class. both men approved of the views expressed by their instructors. that extending the franchise beyond white men was degrading the quality of american democracy. and these instructors richard ely and herbert baxter adams were products of german education. they had been trained at leading german universities and german education at that time, not

unlike other leading european universities, was very racially ized in its view of history and aryan theory. we call it theory, i think they called it science of was was prevalent. so in wilson's notes, in the books that he read in the lectures, they're all talking about the aryans being naturally superior and fit to lead dixon while he got his picture here, went on to do things. he became a lawyer he became a state legislator, became a minister, and then an author and a playwright. his trilogy of heroic novels of, the ku klux klan each sold more than a million copies, which i can only hope for for my book. and his stage play, the clansman, based on one of those three books.

back to harvard's million patrons into the liberty theater on broadway during time that wilson was president. not far away, d.w. griffith made the clansman, which had been a broadway play in a novel into a movie. the birth of a nation, that wilson infamously screened in 1915 in the white house during his time at johns hopkins. wilson and another classmate a guy named charles wright, ventured into baltimore for essentially for sport to observe the congress of women that was meeting their and one of the women who was speaking there was julia ward. how so? this is in 1865. photo of her. she was born in 18. 19. she was 65 years old when wilson saw at this event in baltimore,

which had attracted leading suffragists and scholars from around country. wilson wrote his about experience and he said that he was scandalized to hear these old maids speaking in public. his second joins hopkins accomplished what it was to finish his first book. congressional government. in this book was an expansion and on a paper relatively paper that he had written as a senior at the college of new jersey. it was remarkable both for its in assaulting one of the fundamental pillars of the u.s. constitution and the separation of powers, and equally for the fact that it was based on no original, even though baltimore is not that far from washington. he never set foot in the capitol

before writing this book and it was not based on any other kind of original research, had only a handful of citations. most of the period, such as the nation. but even so, because congressional was such a rousing complaint that congress was the fatal flaw in the constitution and that it ought not to be independent of the executive, he attracted gobs of attention. congress wilson wrote, should be brought under the control and direction of the president in the same way that the prime minister in england has control of the house of commons. oh, essentially, if you think about it remember that his formative political experience was reconstruction. he had reverse a solution to the problem of domineering

republicans forced black rule on the white south. if his system had been in place, then congress could never have overridden andrew johnson's vetoes of reconstruction. we would have had the freeman freedman's bureau for longer. we would have had very different kind of situation. but i think was no coincidence. third and final achievement in his brief time at johns hopkins was to finally marry his georgia fiancee. and, you know, i think like a lot of people here i mean, you know, ellen shared, his racial views and on but it's hard not to admire her. so, you know i think he did well there. and he landed his first paying job, which is what allowed him get married. oh, she kind of holding him back until. he had a plan and she said she be patient and so on.

and he was just desperate to get married. and so it happened. oh his first paying job, however, was not what he wanted because he still had only an undergraduate. and getting a teaching job typically required having a ph.d. but the new women's college and bryn mawr, oh, had a dean who decided to take a chance on him. she saw something in him and in her name was carrie thomas. she hired him not as an associate professor, but as an associate really rankled him. he had a very lowly title, the only one in the whole faculty with that title. oh. but he was the only one on the faculty without a ph.d.. in graded terribly on him that his first boss was a woman. a woman. even more than that who was his

same age. oh. and she was a remarkably accomplished woman that she was herself a product of johns hopkins, as well as the sorbonne and the university of leipzig and the university zurich, where she was the first person man, woman to have graduated summa cum laude. and the memory of would say the memory of man. but now we're getting tripped up in all this this gender. oh, very, very accomplished woman. her ph.d., by the way, was in the theory and grammar of indo germanic linguistics. i thought about majoring in that. oh. as dean of bryn mawr, she was a firm believer in women suffrage. she wanted women in education. and she wanted women to have the same education has managed to compete with men, the workforce

in the professions. oh, later his career, wilson confided to his press secretary that he cordially detested. she was he memorably said, the apotheosis of the advanced woman. let's put her up there. that's carey thomas. he also did not like teaching women. he derided his female students as academic imposture ers who meddled in the serious concerns of life. he wrote in his diary that teaching women history in was about as profitable as lecturing to stonemason as on the evolution of fashion. hmm. so he was desperate to. get away from bryn mawr. but an advanced degree. he was not having much luck. finally, he simply begged his professors, eliot adams, back at johns hopkins.

oh, to just waive the normal degree requirements and grant him a doctorate, he put it very bluntly, and in writing. i need a degree. no. and amazingly. adams and ely went along with scheme. they waived the normal requirements. they gave him full credit for congressional government, though it did not meet the typical johns hopkins requirements for empirical research and so on. they promised to conduct his oral exam in less than an hour. they promised they would personally administer his examinations to ensure there would be, quote, no chance he could fail. you will pass that ordeal very easily, adams underscored in a letter to wilson on the day that he his test. cheerfully reported to his wife that his collaborators made it a breeze, even though he confessed, he displayed considerable considerable ignorance on some points.

the following day he had a glittering new ph.d. nonetheless, it took two years to find a way of bryn mawr. he finally did so and landed at wesleyan university in the middle of connecticut in a suitably named place, middletown. his friend thomas dixon complimented him for finally putting an end to his siege with women over the course of two years at wesleyan, carrying a light teaching load that allowed for writing. he completed a second book. and this one was called the state and its notable feature to classify all of the world's governments according to race, the aryans were at the top, the semites below primitive and savage races, as he called them, such as the turks. need not be studied at all,

wilson said, because they are not the fittest in the evolutionary scheme. at the same that he was writing this textbook, wilson plotted a return to his undergraduate schedule, the college of new jersey. that would be his dream destination, the place of so many fond undergraduate memories. as it happened only two days before wilson's job interview with the president of, the college of new jersey, the college's incumbent professor of jurisprudence and political economy who was 40 years old, dropped dead just just days before they met. and so they were desperate to fill that position. and and wilson did a great job of making sure that he was that man. he remained on the faculty of the college of new jersey as a specialist in politics for dozen years. he was, the faculty representative on the board of trustees when in 1902, the

princeton university, because they had changed their name a few years before, chose a new president. he the job in large measure because of the reputation he had built as a popular professor, a polished and a widely author. and at first, his presidency of princeton was very successful. he strengthened the curriculum. he proved himself an able fundraiser and he attracted several notable scholars to the faculty and really helped build the school's reputation. but he also put his stamp on the school in other ways. the tone at the top throughout, his stewardship of princeton was decidedly racist. he was known on campus for racial jokes and his exaggerated imitation of black. he decreed that it would be altogether inadvisable for black man ever to attend princeton,

and he instructed black applicants who came him personally that they instead apply to schools, like harvard and dartmouth. brown, where they accepted black applicants. a 1910 research report comparing princeton under wilson's leadership to other leading universities found it to be, quote, the least open to blacks. princeton's of black applicants by of their race. the study's authors was an injustice. in which princeton is unique among the universities for good measure. princeton was labeled the most anti-semitic of all the universities in the study. and they ended by saying while harvard's ideal is diversity, princeton's is homogeneity. that year, 1910, would be wilson's last at princeton, he was in the midst of a two year

bitter running dispute with his board of trustees. and he took opportunity to jump into the world of elective politics, which had been his boyhood dream. in september of 1910. so this is all happening very quickly now. new jersey's democratic party bosses. and here we got some slides to go with this. there is a princeton. maneuver, the nomination of wilson, who was the ultimate political new newcomer. to win the nomination at the state democratic convention, even though none of the delegates had ever met him. the party bosses had that much power. so good for them. less than two months later, he was elected and immediately he began a stealth campaign for

president. and that seems like amazing hubris. but for a handful of reasons, it was actually possible for him to do that. for one thing, harper and brothers. his publisher of were behind him for president beginning in 1906 and harper's had been running wilson for president for quite some time. second, his fundraising connection as university president had put him in touch with a whole bunch of wealthy people who could contribute to his campaign and who could easily see him as a president. and third, the princeton alumni base had very many influential in political journalism. and so he had a network of people who could support him. lastly, of people, thomas dixon

in south and several others in journalism were pushing for one of their own, a southerner, to regain the white house because it had been so long. so he was not an unrealistic ambition for him to do this. o his nomination for president in 1912 was equally serendipitous. the speaker the house chamber had been first of all, he defeated wilson by over 300,000 votes and had had primaries. they both competed. but at convention, clark won, a majority of the delegates on 30, a majority on 30 successive ballots. the democratic convention rules, which dated back to slavery, required a two thirds vote that was put in so that southerners

always be satisfied and the south had an effective veto. here is wilson, who is a southerner, who is championed by southern democrats who rebelled against tammany hall in the new yorker and. yet he has strong northeastern ties himself and people in new york and the northeastern knew him and he, if not their first choice, relatively safe and he was the candidate to bridge this divide. and on the 46th ballot, he became the compromised choice. and once again, his timing was magical in the general election, not one, but two republican presidents ran against him. the two republicans combined won a majority of the popular vote. he became president with 42% of the popular vote. his inauguration will be remembered most of all for what

happened the day before. that's what this headlines about the suffrage down pennsylvania avenue that filled the bleachers and sidewalk to overflowing the suffragist first lady nellie taft was there with her suffragist helen who by the way, later became a big wheel at bryn mawr. oh, the elaborate pageant. and that's really what was and that's what the headline says was the brainchild of these two alice ellis paul on the left, lucy burns on the right two young hotspurs working for the national american suffrage association. now that's a mouthful of syllables so everybody called it nasa and you may as well. so the two had taken over nasa's congressional lobbying efforts, and they were only in their late twenties when they did that. they spun it off to their own organization, which was called the congressional union, and

then they merged that into the national woman's party. both of these two women and these pictures by the way, paul, 1915 and burns 1913, beautiful pictures given their age. oh, paul held a bachelor's degree in biology from swarthmore, a master's degree in sociology from the university of pennsylvania. and a ph.d. in economics from penn. and that's not to mention her graduate work in england. an additional studies that i didn't know this. the new york school of philanthropy, which is what we know today, is columbia university, didn't know it used to be the new york school of philanthropy. oh, lucy burns was a vassar alumna in her postgraduate credentials, included yale, the university of berlin, the university of bonn, and.

and yet these two were not ivory tower academics. their experience in the school of hard knocks was with the bankers, one of whom we saw a picture of, oh, the british suffrages of this time really were militants. they would bricks through windows they would destroy statues and museums. they did all sorts of things that were illegal. oh, alice was a quaker. and at one point when she was over in england, gandhi came to meet with pankhurst and thought the possible alice paul was in this meeting. whether she was in the meeting or not, she clearly had the gandhi view. gandhi said, you know, the way to do this is, you know, be and and she was pacifist and she conducted herself that way throughout. and yet they earned the label

militant unfairly in press. wilson had flatly women's suffrage when he was governor when he ran for president in 1912. he took position that women's suffrage was exclusively matter for the states. and therefore the president and the federal government would have nothing to do with it. and so the inaugural parade was meant to, for the new president that millions of american thought differently about that. these two were joined, of course, by thousands of women in the parade, one of whom was either b wells, barnett barnett this is in 1893 photograph of her at age 31. wells already had reputation as a champion of civil rights. she started her public role as a

rights advocate, as a 20 year old student at fisk university, when she famously refused to give up her seat on chesapeake, ohio, and southwestern railroad. when the conductor ordered her to leave the car and she declined. he and nearby white passengers dragged her from her seat. she sued the railroad for her rights, won at trial, won on appeal, and then ultimately lost in the tennessee supreme court, but tied the railroad in litigation for three years. and all of this is. more than 70 years before. oh, we rosa parks, you you refused to give up her bus. one year after her wilson's election, ida wells joined, this

man, william monroe trotter, in a meeting with wilson in the white house to confront him over his policy, which she set in motion almost immediately after taking of segregating the federal workforce. trotter it was impressive, man was harvard's first phi beta kappa key holder. he was the editor at the time of the boston guardian and the head of the national equal league. when trotter and and others in their group presented wilson with a petition signed by more than 20,000 people demanding end to the federal jim crow. expressed surprise. he said, i thought this would be acceptable to everybody and he did not back off his position. nearly three years later, during

his reelection campaign. this particular meeting i'm about to describe took place in july of 1916. wilson with a small group, four women democratic women who came not as the suffragists had come previously, to demand support for the anthony amendment on the basis of simple justice, but rather to talk to him about women's suffrage and specifically anthony movement as a democratic party matter. it was bad for the party. they urged on him. for him, be on what they considered be the wrong side of that issue. and in this meeting where wilson he was with, you know, friendly democrats, he stated bluntly that the states rights argument he had been using was not the real reason the real reason he said for his opposition was

race. and this i read you a quote quote is a sort of pastiche of two quotations. one in the newspaper. oh. and the other oh, in book of the source of the quotation. in both cases is this woman, harriet stanton blatch. so she's one of the four women in what wilson didn't realize when he's meeting with these friendly democratic women is that this this lady is the daughter of, elizabeth cady stanton. oh, so he's got a super suffragist his hands, and she's taking notes. so she pressed him, you know, why won't you support anthony amendment? we've heard all these states rights stuff. but this is bad for the democratic party. and he pushes back and he says dismissed from your mind. the idea that my party or i are concerned about states rights.

it is -- question mrs. blatch that keeps my party from doing as you wish. so blatch alice paul, lucy burns, kerry thomas and thousands of other women members of the national woman's party campaign against wilson in 1916. they campaign against all democrats as well because. they want to put pressure on the to change and make it uncomfortable for everybody and the woman's party in 1916 then had their own national convention not to choose a candidate because the were running candidates, but to force all major parties to send representatives, which they did, to persuade them, to vote for them in their convention, was chicago, right alongside the national convention, but without actually endorsing anyone.

nonetheless, the national women's party was effectively supporting hughes because. they were explicitly anti wilson, charles evans hughes, the republican candidate, was supporting the anthony amendment, as teddy roosevelt had in 1912. hughes heavily for the black vote as a supreme court justice. he had voted to strike down the grandfather clauses that for years had prevented black citizens from voting. he wrote the majority opinion striking down segregation in the railroads, luxury cars, sleeping cars. and we have a picture of him. this is a 1916 family campaign picture. wasn't just wilson who didn't smile. it's the whole, whole family. it turns out the teeth were not the only reason people didn't smile in these pictures. and you can read a lot about it. but it was the norm. i think you know, it started out with the super exposure times

that originally required so that people couldn't hold a smile for that long. they did this. but, you know, as a camp, it's a nice family a nice looking family. but even the little girl know, she's just very serious of course. so that same 1916 election, there's more and more important political gathering, this truly important took place in new york, in rural new york. and it brought together leaders together of, the civil rights movement and the women's suffrage. and it became known as the immediate conference and featured a number of well-known suffragists, including these three women from left to right, mary church, terrell, eddie waites, hunton and nannie burrows. it was a high profile event organized by two harvard ph.ds. w.e.b. dubois and joel spingarn.

dubois put their challenge plainly. this is a quote with the exception of woodrow wilson to the presidency in 1913. they're open. the american --, a period of cruelty, discrimination and wholesale murder in the in the november election. in 1916. dubois had been a socialist socialist. and who would be future winner of the lenin prize voted for the republican evans hughes and joined william monroe trotter in doing so in 1916. also, the election of the first woman to congress, republican jeanette rankin from montana. she was also trained as a scientist like alice paul. she had a biology degree from the university of montana and she was typical of millions of american working women who now were joining movement for

women's voting rights. once she got elected to congress, she was elevated by her republican colleagues to the ranking member positions on the committee on women's suffrage. naturally, given her background, she had been a field worker for nasa previously. that made a lot of sense on the merits. but i tell you then, as now, freshmen don't get to be ranking. so so that was a big deal. and she did well with it. she was the cold floor manager with her democratic colleague in 1918, when for the first time the anthony amendment passed, the house with a two thirds vote. so back up a little bit to early 1970 after wilson defeats charles evans hughes all came down to california. we thought this last presidential action we just had might be a tight one like that in 16.

they didn't know on tuesday, wednesday, thursday who president was going to be in their hand counting ballots up and down california. so the final spread between hughes and wilson in california was 3421. and if hughes had won, then he would have been president. so very call. oh, but the women who had been all in for hughes, as it were. oh, even though the national women's didn't formally endorse, but they felt very strongly that they needed him to win. oh, they were very despondent afterwards. and this is what the sentinels were more. and that's when they started, you know, very peaceably. is alice paul's approach. standing completely silently, you know, shoulder to shoulder. and if this is the white house

fence fence, you know, they're like this sort of plenty room to pass on the sidewalk in front of you if you've ever been to the white house, you how fast that sidewalk is. it's it's 40 or 60 feet and there's just no chance with the slender population of those days that there was any problem by on the sidewalk. but there's, you know, oh, alice, paul, lucy burns over 150 of their colleagues. this effort were imprisoned on trumped up charges, sidewalk, sidewalk obstruction. worse than their illegal convictions. and i state that categorically because those convictions eventually did get overturned. but far late. oh, worse than that was the length of sentences, because sidewalk obstruction is a misdemeanor and a lot of them got sentences. six months. alice paul got seven months of.

and worse than that, their treatment, once they were in prison. these two, you know, alice, paul and lucy burns by now. but we also have doris stevens, and we know lot about what was happening in prison because doris stevens, who was one of the prisoners, wrote a book about it. and that was one of the handful of good sources about what was going on in there. many of the suffragist were placed in solitary confinement. the perfect for sidewalk obstruction, right? oh, they were food. they were denied their own prescription medicines. they were denied access to their family. their doctors and their lawyers. well, all of that highly illegal. paul's windows were up. oh, the door had iron bars on it. she was straitjacketed and

eventually they committed her to the psyche. patrick walker, even though she was perfectly sane when she went on a hunger strike. woodrow wilson personally, bless the decision to force feed her, even though at that time the procedure was known to be life. when the war ended using his wartime powers powers and expanding those wartime powers through regulation that went well beyond the statute originally contemplated. wilson prevented opponents, including william trotter and members of the national woman's party, from leaving the country, were not allowed to travel to the paris peace conference as observers because, as the state department finally explained, they might embarrass the president. it was not only political

opponents who might feel wilson's wrath when they crossed him. they could find themselves if they were his friends, his cut off for life, if they crossed him in a way that he did not like in his 1917 war message. wilson condemned his loyalty and that it would be met with a stern hand of obama, with a firm hand of stern repression. the famous phrase that would be the fate that met colonel edward house, who had been wilson's closest on domestic and foreign matters throughout most of his presidency. his mistake was counseling compromise on the league of nations. the same firm hand slapped down dudley field. malone. he was wilson's trusted friend going the way back to the new jersey campaign. and he was the highest administration official outside

the cabinet below. and disloyalty consisted supporting the women who were protesting the anthony amendment. he he had a heart to heart meeting with in the white house where he pressed wilson and support for the anthony amendment told him that he would be responsible for a great reform if he were get on the winning side on this. and wilson again stood his ground. so malone resigned over the issue made national headlines and papers all across the country. big headlines because it was an extraordinary thing to have happened. both house and were banished from. wilson's sight never spoke with again after the their falling out and neither man was admitted to wilson's funeral in end.

the anthony amendment one, of course. and so too did those who crossed swords with wilson for so long over that subject. they finally experienced victory. but for many of them, years afterward, the scars still burned. william monroe, trotter was just felt beaten down by. the segregation and poverty and discrimination that still existed even in abolition pedigreed boston. and he committed. his funeral drew over 3000 mourners to the people's baptist church in boston, where he had led birth of the nation protests in 1915. more than half a century later, alice paul would that far more than the mobs that assaulted her or the long in jails and prison. what hurt her was the horrible

feeling that the whole country thought were the scum of the earth. and yet she ended life on a note of optimism when a reporter asked her to assess her life and its on human rights. the 92 year old resident of the quaker convalescent home in morristown new jersey described, the struggle for human rights as mosaic. each of us, she said in one little piece, very modest. so that's it for our slideshow and for presentation. thank you. and i look forward to your questions. yes, i knew i. underrated garland. retired foreign service officer. i was a junior in poland in the late 1980s of and at that time i

admired your own work behind the scenes for getting across the series of packages specifically, specifically designed during the bush bush one administration to facilitate the evolution of poland in particular. but all the former communist countries to a democratic system. so thank you. i respected that and admired that ever since. those package worked and evidence of that is what poland is today. there's a link to woodrow to that. obviously poland polish independence was i think, 13th point of the 14 points and they were domestic reasons for that. as much as international reasons. but that's a link that i see with you to woodrow wilson. my question is what is that, drew, you given this your

remarkable professional background so why woodrow this is again, i mean, the subject you just talked about that could just explain that in general, now that you're here and standing what is it about wilson particular, given the whole gamut of american history, you could have. two ways to answer that. what is just purely wilson he is forever to be an important president because of when he was president and what was going on in the world that time as well. what he did during his years in office. but as far as this book is concerned? oh i got to woodrow wilson sort of sideways through my investigation of women's voting rights, which i been interested in for a very long time of the very first piece that i wrote for the law review was about a 1971 u.s. supreme court decision

that for the first time applied the 14th amendment to sex discrimination. about that time just offhandedly, i never really talked politics with my grandmother, but i happened to her just out of curiosity. what was the first presidential election you voted in? and she looked at me sort of crosswise and didn't say it, but i her expression it, you idiot. 1920, that was the first time we could vote. and and so suitably chastened, i, i continued my research which was at that point not professionally done. it was just, you know, reading. as a matter of interest, i very beginning lawyer at that time of. when i went to congress. for ten of my 17 years, i was an

leadership in the house and that meant almost every i would walk multiple times between the house floor and the speaker's conference, where we had our leadership meetings both ways. i would walk by the statue of three very famous suffragists lucretia model is with katie stanton and susan b anthony and i did a little arithmetic recently to figure out how many times i walked by that statue, and it's literally thousands. but every time i walked by, i was reminded of that. this was just a fast meeting. question a little, because it ought not to have taken so long, you know, why did it take so long? what was happening? and it turned out. that race was a big part of why it didn't happen faster. oh, the final act of the suffrage story leads inevitable lead to woodrow wilson. and so more and more i wrote

wilson into my story and when simon schuster bought book, they said make this a biography and then it became an an unusual biography because if if you were going to read one biography of woodrow wilson, i would not recommend this book. it comes on the heels of literally thousands of books about woodrow wilson and several very nicely written biographies of the last 15 years or so of but in all of these biographies, there is a huge lacuna, a gaping, oh, the issue of women's suffrage is just more or less overlooked in the in the very most recent biographies the issues of race and and women's voting are taken seriously were written about respectfully, but not central to the wilson story.

and yet. in 2000, the millennium gallup did a poll and they asked what was the most significant event of the 20th century in. two thirds said women the vote. and i beat out world war one that beat out landing a man on the moon fall of the berlin wall, the collapse of the soviet union. oh, the only thing that ranked ahead of it was, world war two. so something that important, where wilson was a central figure and it was the biggest domestic accomplishment, surely of america, if not his administration in his second term. oh, you know, that's why needed its own book. and that's i did it. yeah. are there of the lesser figures

in that you discovered i suppose your research that really captured attention that you really wanted to bring to a to more prominence. yeah. the picture put up of dudley field malone is certainly one of very interesting character of like all human beings. he has some flaws they thankfully surfaced mostly long after wilson oh but dudley field malone really went out on a limb to, you know, serve as lawyer for these women in court so he quit the wilson administration and and he's representing them you know getting rid of habeas oh coming up with right legal strategy to get the criminal convictions overturned and not a

very honorable he the rest of his life. oh he spent part it in europe part of it in california. he played winston churchill in to movies because as an older man, he kind of looked winston churchill of, yeah. oh, and there there were several people like that that it was really fun to fold into the story. oh, but writ large, congress is overlooked in the success of the anthony because of, you know, here's with congressional government and with his subsequent writings saying that, you know, congress be subservient to the president. he wanted oh, only members of the majority party to be able to introduce legislation. he wanted president's cabinet members to serve in place of committee chairs.

oh, you know, this this is make the president, you know, quite powerful up on capitol hill. oh, and yet the moment happened because congress pressured the president. wilson's first step towards support for the anthony amendment happened the night before the house voted. two thirds support for the constitutional amendment. and that was only after democrat members of the house went up and met him and said, get off the dime. so it's really you know, of course, the men in congress they were all men except for of all who were surpassing racists white supremacists and. just i mean, sometimes you think when you're calling someone a racist or a white supremacist that maybe that's over the top. you read what these people said and, oh, god, and they're saying it on the floor of, the senate floor of the house of so

congress has a lot of bad people. it but it has a lot of good people. it and the good people kept mounting it got stronger and stronger and stronger. so aaron sergeant you know, california republican senator introduces the anthony amendment wasn't called that then in 1878 and it's introduced in every congress subsequently in two other republican congressmen, one from senator and congressman, senator from kansas congressman from indiana, introduced amendments during reconstruction to give women the vote. so this has been going on for a long time. the 14 amendment in first draft that came out very purposefully because the chair was being chair of the drafting committee, was being oh, i won't say pressured. he agreed with the suffragists, but susan anthony and the rest wanted to make sure that women were included. and that same thing happened

with the 15th amendment as we know it, didn't work in either case. but there were lots of members of congress supporting it. so in the end those people got enough throw weight, they kept building their strength year after year after year to make happen. the president was forced to jump to the front of the parade and then, you know, the the portion of the book is sort of a spoiler. oh, but it's history. so you can't really tell people something that you should already. oh, but after president wilson made, his famous address before the senate urging them to pass the anthony as a war measure, he subsequently worked with southern democratic senators to he bless their approach, which was to rewrite the amendment and

change section two, which gave the power through appropriate legislation to enforce it. so have federal enforcement, if they wanted to strike that language and have all these states it, which would preserve jim crow, and then they tried to ram that through in the lame duck before republicans took over in 19. oh, that's disappointing and also was complicit in, oh, not entirely alice paul in 1973 when she was doing an oral history at berkeley, said she wanted to do with that. but at the time the suffragist, which was republican women, said you know, we should all vote for this. it's almost as good as the other one. so not not a shining moment. a lot of people. oh, but the good news is that just a few months later, we got the unadulterated anthony amendment. and so, you know, i think it's for the institution of congress

that's a victory in congress. deserve some credit. so thank you for for coming down here on. i was wondering, in your research, which did you find that wilson daughters played any role in any persuasion during the discussion of, the suffragette amendment, not enough? oh, i think not. for lack of trying the written record, not as extensive as i would have. there are some and there's no question what was going jesse in particular, you know, was she she actually ended up going to alice powell's functions at the national woman's party. you know, the wilson antagonists. oh, sir, one of the president's daughters at all their functions oh, so at one point, jesse

confronted her father and said, you know, there are four of us counting, mom and the three daughters and one of you, and yet only you have the vote. but we know that that he stuck with his position quite i mean, many years. yes, we do have a question on my and i know your i think you given wilson's record prior to the 1912 election regarding race, how was that? he had black support in the 12 election. he had not a whole lot of support, but people like william honor trotter, who was a man of the left, wanted to if he was a new president. wilson had not been around for a long time. his tenure as new jersey governor was very short. oh, and he was trying to win and

met with him and was so encouraging in that meeting that he said when he left, felt he was walking on air. so he kicked the tires and, you know, took a gamble. and of course, trotter then winds up back in the white house shortly afterwards saying what the hell was. we also had a comment on from a fellow researcher. and they say as a researcher who has spent years in photographic archives, they can say that most people of woodrow wilson's age did not smile in their photographs because their teeth were equally as rotten as woodrow wilson. when they did finally smile at a photo. it's because their teeth have been replaced with dentures such as teddy roosevelt with his dentures and for instance, ambassador william bullets teeth were much like photo that you showed of woodrow wilson's following life through his photos. i find bullet hit his smile until they were replaced. so bad teeth was apparently simply the standard.

well, that makes my night because. oh, well, i can come here and learn something from. somebody else who, instead of being the guy who's supposed to have all the answers. oh, that's very pleasant. i wonder about edith wilson is one of the photos that's in the wilson library collection now is beautifully restored. photo of her first public appearance that she had made as wilson's. oh, at the world series. and she has this big, glorious smile and perfect teeth. so she was not very old. and it would be surprising to me if those were false teeth, but maybe i mean, i think some people better dental hygiene, others. well, there raises a question, if i may, i mean, did edith wilson herself have any

influence in the story? yes. yes. she she really did not like the suffragists. oh, she was an anti suffragist. ellen was too. oh, ellen, very circumspect. oh, and i think, you know probably was. there's a guess, as i say on this score, there's not that much written record. oh, but i she was probably more influenced by her daughters. oh. when they all being caught up in this make sense that mom would be sensitive to that. oh oh yeah. but but edith was very unhappy when at one juncture wilson pardoned old suffragists. she did a little bit of writing. that suggests that that was

something that she really didn't like and had given role during his illness at the concentration. her influence one way or another had to do tremendous good or. yes, although. you know, that came later. so by that time we're in a ratification. and and that was and wilson did a little bit around ratification. oh but that was done. tumulty oh, bob, you know, and and her at that point was formerly on in support of the eighth amendment. so i don't think she was pushing back on it. on the dialog, but that was one other question tying this parallel to this in some ways as prohibition, the prohibition

amendment. do you see did see any kind of overlap or intersection in were considered progressive small progressive amendments? was there any kind of relationship between two politically? well they were they were necessarily related because they were simultaneous. oh, there was a lot of southern support for prohibition and southern democrats, of course were in control in the south and they're all states rights people. oh well here's a national that's going to tell every state how to do things and they no qualms whatsoever about prohibition. so it another example how states rights is is as it does. and so much was made of that by supporters of women's suffrage you know right after the prohibition amendment passed, they said look at all the

southern democrats voted for it. so don't give us the states rights stuff because. question going into your thorough research search, did you had any preconceived notion or ideas about wilson's role views, and was anything changed at the end that opened your eyes? either way? yeah, it was very gradual. oh, because that's why it took me 14 years. i'm to ask how long to do this? very slowly. bit of information by bit of information oh, but book on wilson and women's suffrage. was that he reluctantly came around. it is hard. it may not have been in it, but he around and and there was very little about oh you know those

two things were seemingly connected whereas in fact oh that's what was all about. and you know what we can say about wilson, who was a southern democrat himself, is that the. first of all, he was much more polite in his speech than a lot of his southern democratic colleagues. so while he might agree with them on certain things, he would never put things in such offensively blunt terms. oh, which were for because he was the president. oh. but he he did share those views. and so. oh. as i learned more about his early on women. oh, which i went through a little bit here when i touched on grandma and so on, and i learned about his early views

on, race, what i saw was, that he changed on women, his views about women in, the workforce. and so on over a period of decades you mellowed but not so much views on race. oh and and because the end the anti is opposition to the anti man was rooted not in whether a woman's place is in the home but rather what about all these black women and now black men that are going to be voting because of federal enforcement oh you know that's that was the driving thing know well thank you we have another question online asking you could speak to any research you had done on carrie chapman catch. yes and in book there is of a

section devoted to carrie chapman katz winning plan for which she's very famous. the winning plan, according to nasa history, is what got you anti amendment. the winning plan was oh quite racist. oh and, part of it was not made public. in fact, the women were running north the time after they had their plenary convention then went into the basement of the hotel and met and she had a pointer and. she so in different states and here's what we're going to do in each state with the winning plan. oh, and what what they were to do in southern states was work for what called primary suffrage. and under the laws, the southern states at the time, the political parties could their own rules about who could vote in primaries and the way southern politics worked.

democrats were always going to win the general so if they got to make the rules about primaries which they did, then you would have what became known as the white primary. so literally north as part of the winning plan came out for the white primary. oh, this is not a you that plus no this is approval while she was running in at the end of the attempt adulterate the anthony amendment i think shows well if it were convenient they'd be for human rights. oh in a pinch they could be for white women's rights. was there any evidence in your research that that he had any interest in or colleagues and and was there any evidence that there was any of influence or even just myriad discussions

between, those colleagues and him about these issues that you covered in the book? well, england sure was lot, of course, balance between england and the united states on this as there had been earlier with abolition and oh, the first part of the book is the connection closely connected. those two movements were the abolition movement and the women's rights movement. so. the pankhurst ran things differently. alice paul and certainly not north did not copy them, but that was going on simultaneously in other countries around world. but i, i actually did not see anything beyond what north like catalog, which was the progress that was made around the world. so they would in their magazine,