Woodrow Wilson

The Light Withdrawn

De: Christopher Cox

Narrado por: Jonathan Davis

An “assiduously researched” (The Wall Street Journal), “powerful...dispassionate new biography” (The Christian Science Monitor) of Woodrow Wilson, focused on his role in the long national struggle for racial equality and women’s voting rights.

More than a century after his death, Woodrow Wilson’s influence on American politics remains strong while his contradictions loom larger than ever. With panoramic sweep, Woodrow Wilson: The Light Withdrawn examines his life and times, focusing especially on the 28th president’s opposition to the movements for racial equality and women’s voting rights. The Wilson who emerges is a man superbly unsuited to the moment when, as he ascended to the presidency in 1912, the struggle for women’s voting rights in America reached the tipping point.

The first southern Democrat to occupy the White House since the Civil War era brought with him to Washington like-minded men who quickly set to work segregating the federal government. Wilson’s own sympathy for Jim Crow and states’ rights animated his decades-long hostility to the Susan B. Anthony Amendment, which promised universal suffrage backed by federal enforcement. Women demonstrating for voting rights found themselves demonized in government propaganda, beaten and starved while illegally imprisoned, and even confined to the insane asylum.

When, in the twilight of his second term, two-thirds of Congress stood on the threshold of passing the Anthony Amendment, Wilson abruptly switched his position. But in sympathy with like-minded southern Democrats, he endorsed a plan to rewrite the Anthony Amendment to protect Jim Crow restrictions on the voting rights of Black women. The heroes responsible for the eventual success of the unadulterated Anthony Amendment are brought to life by Christopher Cox, an author steeped in the ways of Washington and political power. This is a “Pulitzer Prize–worthy history” (The Washington Examiner) that puts you at the center of one of the greatest advances in the history of American democracy.

Reseñas de la Crítica

"In fascinating detail, this audiobook reveals the life of Woodrow Wilson, including his opposition to racial equality and women’s right to vote. Narrated by Jonathan Davis, the biography highlights the many traits that made Wilson a leader, while also exposing the contradictions that have made him such an interesting and ultimately controversial figure. Davis is an excellent choice as narrator. At times, he uses a tone reminiscent of a newscaster; at other times, he brings a tone of incredulity. Sometimes, you can hear derision in his voice. The picture of Wilson that emerges is that of a complex man unsuited for his moment in history when he had no choice but to confront those issues."

A Needed Biography

This is an excellent addition to Wilson scholarship. This biography is narrow in scope but goes into great depth to study WW's attitudes and policies concerning women's suffrage and the movement for women's equality in general. Because of this focus, the author also reveals Wilson's thinking on race and universal male suffrage. I am a history buff so I am aware of WW's deep and intense opposition to voting rights and social equality for women and Black men. But Cox's work does a great job of revealing to readers just how that opposition shaped Wilson's life, his times, and American history.

Meet the Old Boss, Same as the New Boss

Imagine a President who wins office via the electoral college despite failing to get a popular majority and despite having no real experience in politics. Imagine a president who attacks and occupies Latin American countries in order to control their resources while pretending to stabilize their governments. Imagine a president who allows his agents to violently attack peacefully protesting women. Imagine a president who oversees the worst pandemic in a century, pretending it doesn't exist and doing nothing to minimize its deadly rampage. Imagine a president who allows the government to shut down for months and wars to rage on for years to pursue his own personal political ends.

Imagine a president who plays hundreds of rounds of golf a year even as the world around him explodes. Imagine a president who cheats on his wife with a mistress and then cheats on his mistress with his future second wife. Imagine a president who runs as anti-war and then turns to war months after inauguration. Imagine a president so racist and misogynist that he says the most outrageous things about women and people of color while maintaining cordial relations with white supremacists.

Of course we're talking about Woodrow Wilson, the subject of Christopher Cox's exhaustive history of his racist and sexist beliefs and policies. He tells the full story of the president who revived Jim Crow segregation and the long-dead KKK, the president who not only blocked women's suffrage almost until the end of his eight-year term (it passed only when a fed up nation put the opposition party in charge of Congress, where it was immediately passed), but who had federal workers and military men violently attack women protesting for the vote, and had his hand-picked DC politicians and judges sentence them to hard time for the made-up misdemeanor of blocking traffic -- day after day, month after month! (At least they weren't shot to death for blocking traffic.)

Make no mistake, this is not character assassination. This is well documented, well researched history -- Cox reportedly worked on this for fourteen years. I had already had my positive image of Wilson tainted by the chapter on him in Lie My Teacher Told Me, and yet I was still floored by all the damning detail presented here. Cox even throws doubt on the merits of Wilson's mythical legacy -- the League of Nations, which Wilson's own country failed to ratify, which threw his own country into economic disaster due to his relentless pursuit of it to the exclusion of all else, and which failed miserably, helping pave the way to World War II.

Even U.S. entry into the first World War is recast as cynical Wilsonian politics -- declaring war only a month following his inauguration for winning re-election by 3,000 some odd votes in the deciding state, California, where women who already had voting rights were swayed by his promise to keep their husbands and sons out of the war, only to see their sons and husbands marched off to war so soon. And given how U.S. entry won the war in less than 18 months, how many lives were needlessly lost while Wilson played politics in California?

I find it hard to fault Cox for focusing so heavily on the suffrage issue, it was that important. But that comes at the expense of his racist policies, although to be sure they are examined in depth. On the other hand, Cox never mentions that the so-called pacifist Wilson invaded and occupied Haiti and the Dominican Republic, invaded Mexico twice, even invaded Russia on two fronts (the latter does get a brief mention, but not enough considering the Russians still have not forgotten that). And to be fair, Wilson's economic policies are ignored even though they were effective and progressive.

And Cox never fails to state that Wilson and his racist and sexist followers were Democrats, the Republicans being cast as the anti-racist anti-sexist good guys. Having worked in the Reagan White House and as a Republican Congressman, he never tells us that the parties flipped ideology in the 60s and 70s when the Democrats repudiated their racist past, leaving Nixon to scoop up those left behind with his Southern Strategy.

Nevertheless, on the subject of Woodrow Wilson (or Tommy, as he was known growing up), Cox is spot on with his take-down, explaining why Wilson's name is being taken down from public institutions, now that his racist and sexist ideology has become better known. It's long, and the chapters on the persecution of the women protesting for suffrage are as harrowing as they are nearly endless, but it's fascinating and illuminating. And timely, given the parallels with the current regime, the only major difference being that Wilson's worst pronouncements were written and not that widely read, rather than spoken to a national audience on a regular basis.

A very Detailed and Pedantic Biography

Although I learned a lot about a rather underhanded, sexist, and racist President (sound familiar today?), the book was so dry and laden with details that I found it hard to follow at times. There were other moments I just lost interest. However, it was worth learning the reality behind Wilson.

Wilson As Misogynist and Racist

This is an unflattering picture of Wilson. Following an intro to Wilson’s boyhood and young adulthood, that expose his racist and misogynistic roots, the subject seems to be Women’s Suffrage rather than Wilson. Wilson is shown to be a poor scholar who played a gifted one. The story of how he gained the Presidency is an embarrassing example of how the U.S. selects its leader. There is a very detailed account of the suffrage movement and Wilson’s steadfast objection to it. The mistreatment and torture of the suffragists during Wilson’s presidency is shocking, as is the treatment of Blacks. Interesting story, well performed.

The clarity of Cox’s writing. The liveliness of the reading.

It got a little too much in the weeds at times in the last third.