Does Trump Care for Blacks? Woodrow Wilson Racially Segregated Federal Workers

You be the judge for the question about President Trump.   

Consider how President Woodrow Wilson (Democratic nominee) baited-and-switched blacks, who by 1912 had voted for Abe Lincoln’s Republican Party for almost 50 years.

Wilson campaigned to improve the economic conditions of blacks.

Less than a month after his March 4, 1913 inauguration, he took the first steps toward segregating the federal service.

According to the National Postal Museum (quoting hereafter):

At the Cabinet meeting Postmaster General Albert S. Burleson argued for segregating the Railway Mail Service. He was disturbed by whites and African Americans working in the Railway Mail Service train cars. The workers shared glasses, towels, and washrooms. He said segregation was in the best interest of the African American employees and in the best interest of the Railway Mail Service. Burleson’s ultimate goal was not only to make the railway lines “lily white” but to segregate all government departments.

President Wilson replied to Burleson by saying that he had made ‘no promises in particular to Negroes [sic], except to do them justice.’

Shortly after the April 11 cabinet meeting, cabinet members Treasury Secretary William G. McAdoo and Postmaster General Albert S. Burleson segregated employees in their departments with no objection from President Wilson.

Segregation was quickly implemented at the Post Office Department headquarters in Washington, D.C. Many African American employees were downgraded and even fired. Employees who were downgraded were transferred to the dead letter office, where they did not interact with the public. The few African Americans who remained at the main post offices were put to work behind screens, out of customers’ sight.

….

At the same time, the Railway Mail Association, representing the railway mail workers, refused African Americans membership. In response, African American railway mail workers created an organization that is known today as the National Alliance of Postal and Federal Employees Among the efforts that NAPFE is best known for is their protest against the use of photographs for identification in civil service examinations. The Alliance began that protest in 1914, and continued until it was finally eliminated in 1940.

For more, read https://postalmuseum.si.edu/AfricanAmericanHistory/p5.html#_edn3.

PHOTO CREDIT: izquotes