Inside Panels

On the inside of the black tower, and etched in black stainless steel, are a number of quotes from Woodrow Wilson’s detractors. Below they are listed from bottom to top.


 “You must remember that the ability, sincerity and worth of one-tenth of the population of your country will be absolutely veiled from you unless you make effort to lift the veil.

We want to be treated as men. We want to vote. We want our children educated. We want lynching stopped. We want no longer to be herded as cattle on street cars and railroads. We want the right to earn a living, to own our own property and to spend our income unhindered and uncursed. Your power is limited? We know that, but the power of the American people is unlimited. Today you embody that power, you typify its ideals. In the name then of that common country for which your fathers and ours have bled and toiled, be not untrue, President Wilson, to the highest ideals of American Democracy.”

- W. E. B. Du Bois
“Open Letter to Woodrow Wilson,” The Crisis, March 1913


“How long must women wait for liberty?”

“Mr. President, what will you do for woman suffrage?”

 - Women’s Suffrage Banners 
Rally, September 1, 1918


“Never before was race prejudice and race distinction made official under National Government, and never before incorporated in a National Government policy.

Necessity cannot be pleaded as an excuse for this affront and injury.  Afro-Americans and other American employees have been working together, eating at the same tables, and using the same lavatories and toilets for two generations.”

- William Monroe Trotter
Address to the President, Nov. 6, 1913


“He believed all he preached about human brotherhood and charity towards all men. Nevertheless, he was a bigoted sectarian who placed in the category of the damned all those who belonged to a different political creed and excluded them for ever from charitable thought or destiny.”

- David Lloyd George
Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, 1916-1922


 “Every 10-year-old child throughout the country knows the result, for segregation as encouraged and practiced in Uncle Sam’s workshops here in Washington has been given a new meaning and impetus under President Wilson, and members of the Race have been snubbed, degraded and humiliated during this administration as never before since freedom.”

- Ida B. Wells-Barnett
“National Equal Rights Congress Comes to End,” The Chicago Defender, October 14, 1916


“I am quite sure that [Wilson] never wholeheartedly believed in college education for women.  He once said to me that a woman who had married an intellectual, educated man was often better educated than a woman who had college training.”

- Lucy Maynard Salmon
Historian and former graduate student of Woodrow Wilson at Bryn Mawr College


“The white people of this country once sowed slave pens, bullwhips, auction blocks and handcuffs, and reaped a rebellion.  Mr. President, let me in closing remind you that this nation is now sowing the seed of lynching in every conceivable barbarous form, and that harvest time is coming.”

- Reverend G. Woodly
“Open Letter to Hon. Woodrow Wilson President of the United States,” The Chicago Defender, October 30, 1915


We pressed him for a promise to make a specific utterance against mob violence and lynching.  He demurred, saying that he did not think any word from him would have special effect.”

- James Weldon Johnson
Along This Way, 1934


“Have you a ‘new freedom’ for white Americans and a new slavery for your ‘Afro-American fellow citizens’?  God forbid!

As equal citizens and by virtue of your public promises we are entitled at your hands to freedom from discrimination, restriction, imputation and insult in government employ.”

- William Monroe Trotter
Second Address to the President, Nov. 12, 1914


“During the last campaign, believing firmly that the Republican Party and its leaders had systematically betrayed the interests of the colored people, many of our members did what they could to turn the colored vote toward you.  We received from you a promise of justice and sincere endeavor to forward their interests.  We need scarcely to say that you have grievously disappointed us.”

- W. E. B. Du Bois
The Crisis, October 10, 1916


On the lenticular face of the installation — located on the inside of the white column — are the following images (from bottom to top):

  • W.E.B. Du Bois,
  • Ida B. Wells-Barnett,
  • Protesters marching during the NAACP Silent Parade in 1917 against lynching across America,
  • Booker T. Washington,
  • Lavinia Lloyd Dock,
  • Women suffragist protesting in front of the White House in 1917,
  • James Weldon Johnson,
  • Carrie Chapman Catt,
  • The Niagara Movement,
  • William Monroe Trotter,
  • Kelly Miller,
  • David Lloyd George.