Woodrow Wilson
Race relations
In terms of Reconstruction, Wilson held the common southern view that the South was demoralized by northern carpetbaggers and that overreach on the part of the Radical Republicans justified extreme measures to reassert democratic, white majority control of Southern state governments. During Wilson's presidency, D. W. Griffith's film The Birth of a Nation (1915) was the first motion picture to be screened in the White House. Wilson agreed to screen the film at the urging of Thomas Dixon Jr., a Johns Hopkins classmate who wrote the book on which The Birth of a Nation was based. The film, while revolutionary in its cinematic technique, glorified the Ku Klux Klan and portrayed blacks as uncouth and uncivilized. Wilson, and only Wilson, is quoted in the film (three times) as a scholar of American history, and made no protest over the misquotation of his words. Nonetheless, after seeing the film, Wilson felt betrayed by Dixon, as he felt that Dixon had misrepresented his views. Wilson's book did try to explain why many Southerners joined the Klan, but Wilson personally rejected the Ku Klux Klan and lynching as un-American. After the screening, Wilson issued a public statement stating that he had been "unaware of the character of the play before it was presented and has at no time expressed his approbation of it. Its exhibition at the White House was a courtesy extended to an old acquaintance." Historians have generally concluded that Wilson probably said that The Birth of a Nation was like "writing history with lightning", but reject the allegation that Wilson also remarked, "My only regret is that it is all so terribly true."
Woodrow Wilson-79