TRENTON, NJ – New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy is the latest person to criticize the legacy of former Democrat U.S. President Woodrow Wilson. The desk in Murphy’s office bears the name of former President Woodrow Wilson, was a stark reminder of hate and racism and its ties to the Democrat Party.
On Monday, Governor Murphy said he is abandoning the desk and the ugliness of racism that was bred in the Democrat Party from existence until the late twentieth century. Murphy is reckoning with his own political party’s stain on America.
“As soon as I could get a replacement, which was not as easy as I thought, I got one and I think that was the right thing to do,” Murphy said Murphy said. “Woodrow Wilson and his legacy is being swept up in that as it should be.”
Woodrow Wilson’s name has also been taken off buildings at both Princeton and Monmouth Universities.
Wilson was the 34th Governor of New Jersey and 28th President of the United States serving from 1913 until 1921. Wilson was born in 1856 in Staunton, Virginia and was the first southerner to become President of the United States. He grew up in the post-Civil War south. Wilson’s candidacy was supported by southern segregationists and Wilson, according to historians as being a supporter of segregation. His belief was that if America “shocked the social” system and abolished segregation, civil turmoil would ensue. Wilson was known for having little sympathy for the feelings and aspirations of the African American population, a platform in line with the Democrat Party of the day.
During World War I, Wilson enacted a draft that included hundreds of thousands of African American soldiers but maintained a segregated U.S. Army throughout the war.
It wasn’t just the African American population despised by Wilson. Wilson feared new waves of immigration from Eastern Europe and Southern Europe were contaminating the American blood lines.
The Democrat Party in America, which was founded in 1828 was always in support of slavery and many Democrats opposed the Civil Rights Act and movement of the mid-twentieth century. In that vote, 40% of Democrats opposed civil rights for African Americans compared to just 22% of Republicans who opposed it.
The Klu Klux Klan, America’s leading hate and white supremacy group, was founded in 1865 as a Democrat Party resistance group to the Republican Party’s platform against slavery during America’s reconstruction era. The KKK was instrumental in developing the Democrat Party’s power base in the deep south to organize against the newer Republican Party.
When it comes to the renaming of buildings on the campuses at Princeton and Monmouth University, Murphy said he supports that too.
“I applaud Princeton, in all seriousness. I did swap out my desk at the end of the week, and Princeton renamed its School of International Affairs over the weekend and I applaud them for doing that,” Murphy said.
