Wilson won Black votes on moderation pledges then imposed segregation in federal offices

Evidence

Though Woodrow Wilson, a Virginia-born Democrat, was a former Princeton political scientist who had made a name for himself conjuring up the Black terrors of Reconstruction and defending the re-enslaving White South, he had secured Du Bois’s vote and the votes of thousands of other Black men by pledging moderation on race. Once in office, Wilson gave southern segregationists a dominant influence in his administration, while encouraging Blacks to focus on uplift suasion. W. E. B. Du Bois felt hoodwinked. An American politician had once again played Black voters like a drum, and forced them to hear the deadening beat of segregation in Washington, DC, and federal offices across the South. — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 801

Categorization

• XREF: Fortifies the reader’s test of Kendi’s inversion: policy (segregationist administration) preceded and followed by Du Bois’s rationalization of voting for Wilson.
• SEED: Angle: the pattern of promising moderation then delivering segregationist policy as a recurring American political tactic, from Wilson onward.