René Auberjonois
Woodrow Wilson
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Jan 6, 2002 · A documentary about the intellectual pacifist progressive President Woodrow Wilson, showing his place in history as the president who oversaw America's transformation into a singular global power, but also his failed quest for world peace, due to his poor physical stamina and political dexterity.
- (41)
- Documentary, Drama
- Carl Byker, Mitch Wilson
- 2002-01-06
Woodrow Wilson and the Birth of the American Century is a 2002 documentary, narrated by Linda Hunt, that was aired in the United States as a two-part limited television series starting on January 6, 2002. The documentary won an IDA Award for its directors Carl Byker and Mitch Wilson in the category of "Limited Series".
- Overview
- Early life, education, and governorship
Woodrow Wilson, one of 13 U.S. presidents who served two full terms of office, was the 28th president of the United States, serving from 1913 to 1921. Throughout his presidency, Wilson fought for reforms with respect to labour laws, the rights of women, and international relations.
What were Woodrow Wilson’s accomplishments?
Woodrow Wilson created the League of Nations after World War I (1914–18). He presided over ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment, giving women the right to vote, and laws that prohibited child labour and that mandated an eight-hour workday for railroad workers. He appointed the first Jewish justice, Louis Brandeis, to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Why was Woodrow Wilson so influential?
Although his historical reputation suffered in his final years because of Republican political gains, during World War II Woodrow Wilson’s reputation soared. He was considered a wrongly unheeded prophet whose policies would have prevented world calamity. Nevertheless, the creation of the United Nations and collective security pacts are viewed as fulfillment of his internationalist vision.
Woodrow Wilson (born December 28, 1856, Staunton, Virginia, U.S.—died February 3, 1924, Washington, D.C.) 28th president of the United States (1913–21), an American scholar and statesman best remembered for his legislative accomplishments and his high-minded idealism. Wilson led his country into World War I and became the creator and leading advocate of the League of Nations, for which he was awarded the 1919 Nobel Prize for Peace. During his second term the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, giving women the right to vote, was passed and ratified. He suffered a paralytic stroke while seeking American public support for the Treaty of Versailles (October 1919), and his incapacity, which lasted for the rest of his term of office, caused the worst crisis of presidential disability in American history.
Wilson’s father, Joseph Ruggles Wilson, was a Presbyterian minister who had moved to Virginia from Ohio and was the son of Scotch-Irish immigrants; his mother, Janet Woodrow, the daughter of a Presbyterian minister, had been born in England of Scottish parentage. Wilson was the only president since Andrew Jackson to have a foreign-born parent.
Naturally enough, the Presbyterian church played a commanding role in the upbringing of “Tommy” Wilson. The family left Virginia before his second birthday, as his father successively held pastorates in Augusta, Georgia, and Wilmington, North Carolina, and taught at the Columbia Theological Seminary in South Carolina. His uncle, James Woodrow, was the leading light of the seminary faculty, and after college the young man dropped his first name both to emphasize the family connection and because he thought “Woodrow Wilson” sounded more dignified. His father served during the Civil War as a chaplain with the Confederate army, and his church in Augusta was turned into a military hospital. The young Wilson was deeply affected by the horrors of the war.
Apparently dyslexic from childhood, Wilson did not learn to read until after he was 10 and never became a rapid reader. Nevertheless, he developed passionate interests in politics and literature. He attended Davidson College near Charlotte, North Carolina, for a year before entering what is now Princeton University in 1875. At Princeton he blossomed intellectually, reading widely, engaging in debate, and editing the college newspaper. While still an undergraduate, he published a scholarly essay that compared the American government with the British parliamentary system, a subject that he would develop further in his first book and apply in his own political career.
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U.S. Presidents and Their Years in Office Quiz
After graduation from Princeton in 1879, Wilson studied law at the University of Virginia, with the hope that law would lead to politics. Two years of humdrum legal practice in Atlanta disillusioned him, and he abandoned his law career for graduate study in government and history at Johns Hopkins University, where in 1886 he received a Ph.D.; he was the only president to have earned that degree.
President Wilson aligned himself symbolically with the KKK by ordering a private screening of D.W. Griffith’s notoriously racist film Birth of a Nation, which portrayed African Americans as savage criminals and the KKK as heroic enforcers of a just and humane racial order.
- Back then, it didn't matter as much. This was a time when African Americans had very little rights, so electing a president with ties to the Klan w...
- The US wanted to remain neutral much like Washington's Farewell Address Warns
- Wilson was elected since he had much of the South's support, most of the Democrat's support and he was facing 2 conservatives that split the Republ...
- All kinds of "not very good persons" have become president of the United States. A phrase that often guides me when I begin to overly admire someon...
- Religions all around the world encompass people who are not perfect. Wilson's racism was undented by his religious membership and affiliation. Alas...
- There's no "if" about it. He WAS on the side of the KKK. His personal racism explains more than a small part of it. Racism blinded him to certain t...
- Well, he was born in December of 1856, so he'd be 160 years old today.
- Wilson did not join the KKK. He aligned himself with the KKK. He was a racist. He implemented segregation practices in the government that were mor...
- Like all of us, whatever we might be (students, video gamers, etc.), he was both good and bad.
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Thomas Woodrow Wilson (December 28, 1856 – February 3, 1924) was an American politician and academic who served as the 28th president of the United States from 1913 to 1921.
4 days ago · The Making of a Progressive Leader. Woodrow Wilson, the 28th President of the United States, took a unique path to the White House that shaped his worldview and leadership style. Born in Virginia in 1856 to a Presbyterian minister father, Wilson‘s religious upbringing instilled in him a strong moral compass and a belief in the power of ideas ...
A documentary about the intellectual pacifist progressive President Woodrow Wilson, showing his place in history as the president who oversaw America's transformation into a...
