On Jan. 29, a midair collision over the Potomac River near Reagan National Airport killed all 67 people aboard a Bombardier airliner and an Army Black Hawk helicopter. Without evidence, President Donald Trump blamed the tragedy on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives, suggesting they had compromised the competence of Army pilots.
This was no isolated claim. On Jan. 21, his second day back in office, Trump fired U.S. Coast Guard Commandant Admiral Linda Lee Fagan, the first woman to lead a military branch, at least in part for her “excessive focus” on DEI initiatives, which the Trump Administration deemed a waste of “resources” and distracting “attention from operational imperatives.” A month later, on Feb. 21, Air Force General Charles Q. Brown, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was also dismissed as part of the administration’s purge of “DEI.” By May 8, Trump fired the Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden, the first African American and first woman to hold the position, with the White House press secretary citing “quite concerning things that she had done at the Library of Congress in the pursuit of DEI.”
Beyond headline-grabbing firings, the Administration has continued to roll back DEI initiatives across federal agencies and removed numerous career officials, many for their involvement in those efforts. Under the Trump Administration’s sweeping and often chaotic job cuts, Black federal workers, particularly women, have shouldered a disproportionate share of the losses.
This is not the first time Washington, D.C., and the nation have witnessed a President and his administration dismantle equity and segregate the federal government. Over a century ago, Woodrow Wilson (in office from 1913-1921) reversed decades of racial integration and inclusion efforts—what might now be called “DEI”—in federal employment.
After the Civil War (1861-1865), Republican Administrations appointed Black Americans to government positions. Through the Pendleton Civil Service Act of 1883, merit-based civil service examinations, and a Civil Service Commission that sought to assure qualified Black applicants were fairly considered for job openings and promotions, Black women and men gained positions at all levels of the federal government.
By the turn of the 20th century, African American men held prominent federal government roles as diplomats, auditors, and customs officials. It was common to see Black men in supervisory positions, overseeing white and Black government employees.
Read More: The Human Cost of Trump Firing All Federal DEI Workers
That relatively inclusive and diverse federal workforce ended after Wilson took office. Elected in 1912, Wilson was the first Southerner president since the Civil War. Born in Virginia in 1856, Wilson was raised in Georgia and South Carolina during the Civil War and Reconstruction. Wilson’s father, a Presbyterian minister, defended the Confederacy and slavery from the pulpit.
The future president left the South to attend the College of New Jersey, later renamed Princeton University. At the time, the institution enrolled several African American students whose presence at times roiled a campus that also attracted Southern white students. Wilson went on to obtain a Ph.D. in History and Political Science from Johns Hopkins University. He became a popular writer and leading American academic, and a published apologist for Confederate southern states, slavery, and even the Ku Klux Klan. When he returned to Princeton to become the university’s president in 1902, Wilson denied Black students ever attended the institution, contradicting historical reality. He also enforced racial segregation and worked to attract more white students from the South.
In 1913, Wilson took his deeply-rooted racial ideology to the White House. As the nation’s newly elected president, he was determined to align federal institutions with the Jim Crow racial order of his home region, and, to help accomplish that, he filled his Administration with segregationist Southern Democrats. Plus, pro-segregation Democrats had won control of both houses of Congress in the 1912 elections, and they eagerly supported Wilson’s Administration.
With segregationists in control of the federal government, Wilson took swift action. His administration first segregated the Post Office, which employed over half of the federal government’s Black employees—especially Black women. Other departments followed. Breaking tradition, a white ambassador was appointed to Haiti. The Administration also ousted Black officials from leadership roles in the civil service, replacing them with white appointees. Rank-and-file Black workers were also blocked from promotions, demoted, reassigned, or fired outright. Beyond employment, Wilson Administration officials re-segregated bathrooms, lunchrooms, and workspaces in federal buildings that had been integrated since the end of the Civil War.
Black Americans resisted through legal challenges, protests, and lobbying. In a 1914 meeting with African American civil rights activist William Monroe Trotter, Wilson defended segregation, declaring that it was “not humiliating, but a benefit.” Wilson claimed that “segregation was caused by friction between the colored and white clerks” and was implemented “to avoid friction.” Refraining from pointing out Wilson’s deceptive language, the Harvard-educated Trotter countered with “the established facts” that for “50 years white and colored clerks have been working together in peace and harmony.” Those facts were abruptly ignored.
In February of the next year, Wilson hosted a White House screening of The Birth of a Nation, the controversial 1915 film that degraded African American characters played by white actors in black face and depicted the Ku Klux Klan as heroes. Wilson’s family, cabinet, and staff enjoyed the film, while civil rights organizations protested across the country.
Read More: Retreating From DEI Initiatives Could Cost Businesses Billions
The Wilson Administration continued the purging of Black civil servants, through firings, demotions, and preventing new hires, further entrenching segregation across the federal government.
Wilson carefully framed federal discrimination as good government, arguing that segregation ensured efficiency, minimized conflict, and maintained the integrity of federal institutions.
However, he made no pretense of equality. His policies shattered the “separate but equal” false façade of the Jim Crow era. With Black Americans blocked from well-paying federal jobs and promotion, an already existing earning gap between black and white civil servants only increased. For the descendants of fired, demoted, and aspiring civil servants, the adverse economic effects persisted for generations.
By the time Republicans regained power in 1921, Wilson’s segregationist agenda had already altered the fabric of American life. His policies fueled the social climate of the 1910s and 1920s, decades marked by the resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan across the nation, widespread racial violence, and the destruction of Black communities, such as the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre. It took decades, World War II and its need for national mobilization, as well as the Civil Rights Movement before federal employment and society began to more fully open again for Black Americans.
Today, elements of Wilson’s pro-segregation logic are echoing in the Trump Administration’s dismantling of DEI efforts and targeted job cuts disproportionately affecting African American federal workers. By disrupting a white-dominated racial order, diversity, equity, and inclusion, we are told, breeds inefficiency, instability, and even aerial disaster.
Even if we have yet to see the complete repercussions of today’s assaults on DEI, we do know that the Wilson Administration dismantled decades of African American social advancement, motivated by pro-segregationist beliefs, under the guise of good governance.
Joel Zapata is Assistant Professor of History at Oregon State University.
Made by History takes readers beyond the headlines with articles written and edited by professional historians. Learn more about Made by History at TIME here. Opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of TIME editors.
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