I saw Woodrow Wilson but once in my life.

I was standing at the edge of the Place de la Concorde in Paris when he rode through in December

1918.

He had come to attend the Congress of Versailles, and he was at the moment, without doubt, the

foremost figure in the world.

He had just been wildly acclaimed in London and Rome, and Paris was no wit behind.

He enjoyed the adulation. He smiled and bowed, right and left, and seemed to have no apprehension

of the difficulty, perhaps the impossibility of the task that lay before him.

I had been indirectly in touch with him for a decade.

Returning from the inspiring Races Congress of London, in 1911, I viewed the coming presidential election with interest and apprehension.

I was, and had been for years, utterly disgusted with the treatment,

which the Republican Party had meted out to its Negro supporters. But it was difficult to get

them to vote anything but the Republican ticket. I eagerly welcomed the third-party

bull moose movement under Roosevelt and sent to their Chicago convention a proposed plank on the Negro problem.

It was turned down flatly.

Roosevelt not only distrusted me personally, but thought that he had a chance to capture the South and flirted with the Lily Whites to his ultimate disaster.

Bishop Alexander Walters called upon me later in the little office in Vessy Street, New York,

where I was editing the new Crisis magazine. He said he had been in touch with Woodrow Wilson,

and he believed Mr. Wilson was well-disposed toward Negroes.

He proposed to approach him directly on the subject, and I agreed with him that it would be worthwhile.

I had used Woodrow Wilson's state in my classes as a teacher.

I knew him as a scholar and a new type of politician.

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