American Presidents and Their Attitudes, Beliefs, and Actions Surrounding Education and Multiculturalism

Multicultural Education, Spring 2004 by Baptiste, H Prentice, Araujo, Blanca

In 1828 Andrew was elected the seventh president of the United States. He was the first (and arguably the only chief executive in American history) not to consider slavery a moral evil (O'Reilly, 1995). He traded in men, became master of the Hermitage in Tennessee and owned eighty-three slaves. He became the southwest's biggest slave holder. Throughout his presidential term, he stood with the South and for slavery.

He has been seen as a defender of the working class, but when he worked against the Bank Act he hurt the farmers, mechanics, and laborers. However, his idea of working class did not refer to factory workers and day laborers, but to the members of what he considered the American producing class as contrasted to the non-producing financial and commercial class (Cole, 1993). His policies did often side with the working class.

Andrew Jackson was seen as a very temperamental man. He had an absolute determination to win at whatever cost. As a consequence, he was capable of extraordinary feats of courage and daring, feats of perseverance in the face of incredible odds. Nothing less than victory was acceptable to him. Defeat was unthinkable (Remini, 1988). Ironically, Jackson was also seen as a very cautious and prudent man. He was a conservative and deliberate man whose ambition and determination to succeed conditioned everything he did (Remini, 1988).

Wood row Wilson

Woodrow Wilson was born on December 28, 1856, in Stauton, Virginia. As a boy. Woodrow moved to Augusta, Georgia, and then to Columbia, South Carolina, when he was fourteen (Brands, 2003). Through his own family, Wilson received an early and convincing introduction to orthodox Southern attitudes about race (Clayton, 1972). His father was pro-slavery and a supporter of the Confederacy. Wilson grew up amid the Civil War and Reconstruction (Freund, 2003). Throughout his life, he remained very proud of his Southern heritage, which was to become very obvious through his actions as President.

At age seventeen, Woodrow went to a small college in North Carolina and in 1875 he went on to Princeton in New Jersey. From there he returned to Virginia and enrolled at the University of Virginia, where he studied law. He got bored with law after a short time of practicing it and enrolled in the graduate school of the John Hopkins University in Baltimore. He earned a doctorate and became a scholar of national reputation (O'Reilly, 2003). In 1902, he accepted the presidency of Princeton University (Clements, 1992).

As president of Princeton, he turned away Black applicants (Freund, 2003). This made Princeton the only major Northern university that refused to admit Blacks (Loewen, 1995). To Wilson's mind, the paramount issue in this matter was not the admission of Blacks, but rather the social peace and harmony of the university which, he feared, would have been disturbed (even though Blacks had been attending this university peacefully for years). He did not want to create complications for the many Southern students who attended Princeton (Garrett, 1982). It is said that while he was president at Princeton, no Black ever received a degree from that university (Garrett, 1982).