"What's past is prologue..."~William Shakespeare
Over 100 years ago, in 1913 to be precise, President Woodrow Wilson authorized overt racial segregation in federal employment by accepting Postmaster General Albert Burleson's plan to segregate the Railway Mail Service. Burleson argued that he found it “intolerable” that white and Black employees had to work together and share drinking glasses and washrooms. Burleson's sentiment was shared by others in Wilson's administration; William McAdoo, secretary of the treasury, argued that segregation was necessary “to remove the causes of complaint and irritation where white women have been forced unnecessarily to sit at desks with colored men.”