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Presidential

Woodrow Wilson: A complicated legacy

Presidential

The Washington Post

History, Government, Education

4.53.7K Ratings

🗓️ 11 July 2016

⏱️ 45 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Racism, diplomacy, women's suffrage...historian John Milton Cooper and Woodrow Wilson House executive director Robert Enholm lead us through Wilson's complicated personal and presidential legacy.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

The start of my research about Woodrow Wilson this week took me to the place where he died.

0:15.1

It's a large town home in the Kalaram and neighborhood of Washington, D.C. and it's preserved

0:21.0

just like it was when he lived there.

0:23.8

It's marble entryways the same, it's rooms, the chiming grandfather clock on the staircase

0:29.9

the Victoria on the landing.

0:33.4

It's where Wilson spent the last few years of his life after leaving the White House.

0:40.2

For a long time the main legacy of Wilson's, you know, the kind of thing that ends up on

0:44.1

a history exam, had to do with his leadership during World War I. In particular, you probably

0:50.6

remember phrases like the 14 points and the League of Nations and you hear things like

0:57.4

the Paris Peace Conference, Wilson really strode onto the world stage on behalf of the

1:02.9

United States and arguably the world hasn't been the same sense.

1:07.6

So that's Robert N. Holm, who's the executive director of the Woodrow Wilson House and he

1:12.6

led me on a tour through its rooms and through Woodrow Wilson's legacy.

1:18.0

But his job is getting a lot more complicated today because there's another part of Wilson's

1:23.4

life and presidency that's starting to overshadow more and more Wilson's ideas of global

1:30.0

peace and American diplomacy.

1:33.2

And that's Wilson's racism.

1:36.2

We are love.

1:37.2

We are love.

1:38.2

We here.

1:39.2

We here.

1:40.2

We here.

...

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