I finished cataloging my box. It took about twelve hours, and while I didn’t get bored of straight data migration, I was excited my next task involved reading scans of Library of Congress documents on the Wilson\u00a0administration and segregation. I’m still cataloging, but I have to read most of the documents in order give each a brief description, and in some cases, to determine how it relates to the other documents in its group.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m trying to keep an open mind and avoid characterizing any of the people as \u201cgood\u201d or \u201cbad\u201d because I feel that would make it harder to report on what happened in the online exhibit I\u2019ll be working on later in the semester. Still, there are three particular letter-writers who I cannot help but mentally label \u201csordid.\u201d As I read the letters to Wilson supporting\/protesting segregation, I’m at a loss for who to believe.<\/p>\n
A proponent of segregation in Congress said its express purpose was to strip political power from African Americans and lamented that they were ever given voting rights.<\/p>\n
Wilson said segregation was not put in place to harm African-Americans, but to make both races happier and eliminate inter-racial friction.<\/p>\n
One young white woman testified before Congress in favor of racial segregation saying awful things about her African-American supervisor. My knee-jerk reaction was to believe she was a racist who fabricated her testimony. But there\u2019s also the possibility that her\u00a0supervisor really was discriminating against her.<\/p>\n
Some letters don’t make any sense\u00a0to me<\/i>, like the letter from an African-American constituent praising Wilson’s support of segregation and calling it “natural” and “just”.\u00a0But maybe the writer could articulate a logical (albeit controversial) rationale for supporting segregation, even though I cannot imagine what it could be.<\/p>\n
This is my first project doing historical research and the take away is that history is way muddier than I expected. But that\u2019s part of what makes it exciting\u2014 and real. I\u2019m finding five perspectives when I thought there\u2019d be two, and it\u2019s fascinating me.<\/p>\n
.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I finished cataloging my box. It took about twelve hours, and while I didn’t get bored of straight data migration, I was excited my next task involved reading scans of Library of Congress documents on the Wilson\u00a0administration and segregation. I’m still cataloging, but I have to read most of the documents in order give each … Continue reading “Who’s Lying?”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-30","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/interns.presidentwilson.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/interns.presidentwilson.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/interns.presidentwilson.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/interns.presidentwilson.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/interns.presidentwilson.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/interns.presidentwilson.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":84,"href":"https:\/\/interns.presidentwilson.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30\/revisions\/84"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/interns.presidentwilson.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/interns.presidentwilson.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/interns.presidentwilson.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}