Woodrow Wilson: The Light Withdrawn - Hardcover

by Christopher Cox (Author)

A timely reassessment of Woodrow Wilson and his role in the long national struggle for racial equality and women's voting rights.

More than a century after he dominated American politics, Woodrow Wilson still fascinates. With panoramic sweep, Woodrow Wilson: The Light Withdrawn reassesses his life and his role in the movements for racial equality and women's suffrage. The Wilson that emerges is a man superbly unsuited to the moment when he ascended to the presidency in 1912, as 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 years-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 acquiesced in a "race rider" that would protect Jim Crow. 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 brilliant, carefully researched work that puts you at the center of one of the greatest advances in the history of American democracy.

Author Biography

Christopher Cox is a Senior Scholar in Residence at the University of California, Irvine, a Life Trustee of the University of Southern California, Chair of the Rhodes Scholarship selection committee for Southern California and the Pacific, and a member of several nonprofit and for-profit boards. Between two decades as a practicing lawyer, he served as chair of the Homeland Security Committee in the US House of Representatives, chair of the US Securities and Exchange Commission, and senior associate counsel to the President. He has written for Fortune, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Forbes, The Detroit News, The Denver Post, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and dozens of other publications.