Opening Statement of Councilmember David Grosso

PR 23-892, Sense of the Council Woodrow High School Renaming Protocol

Resolution of 2020
Committee of the Whole
September 15, 2020

Thank you, Chairman Mendelson for holding this hearing.

And thank you, Councilmember Cheh for taking the lead on this Sense of the Council Resolution.

Our society’s struggle to come terms with its racist past has been complicated by efforts to spare white
people’s feelings. In fact, we have sanitized the very word “racist.”

Today the term is too often reserved solely for members of the Klu Klux Klan or folks who consistently
use derogatory racial slurs.

But even by those lax standards, Woodrow Wilson was extremely racist.

As President, Woodrow Wilson oversaw the resegregation of multiple federal agencies, going so far as
to place Black people who could not logistically be segregated in literal cages.

Federal agencies under Woodrow’s administration outright fired Black employees and began requiring
photographs on job applications to ensure Black applicants were denied employment immediately.

He spoke positively of segregation, refused to appoint Black statesmen to public office, and even
helped kill a proposal from Japan calling for the treaty ending World War I to recognize the principle of
racial equality at the Versailles Convention in 1919.

Most notably, Woodrow Wilson was a vocal supporter of the Klu Klux Klan, so much so that
Confederates – those who sought to destroy and end this country simply because they wanted to own
Black people as property - celebrated his election.

He strongly opposed Black people having the right to vote even defending the South’s suppression of
Black voters.

The racist outlook he held and the racist policies he pursued laid the groundwork for another great
injustice – the decimation of the Free Black community of Fort Reno.

That community was entirely wiped out when the federal government decided to condemn most of its
housing to build Deal Middle School, Wilson High School, a park, and a water tower.

Woodrow Wilson does not deserve to have a DC Public School named after him.

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It was wrong to open the school in 1935 as an all-white school bearing his name, and it is wrong now to
keep it open under that name.

The District of Columbia, our government, nor our people are not without our own complicity in
perpetuating racism and white supremacy.

But we also do not believe that is what the District of Columbia stands for and we are constantly
striving toward the greater ideal of racial equity.

If DCPS is serious about this work, they should begin the process of renaming the school immediately.

Thank you.

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