“Discrimination in Washington was never merely another example of southern Jim Crow: it was evidence of the white supremacy at the heart of the nation” (206). This statement, at the end of Eric S. Yellin's Racism in the Nation's Service, highlights a key portion of the book's main argument—that the trajectory of racial discrimination in the capital was at once similar to and different from what one might find elsewhere in the early twentieth century. Yellin's work operates at the intersection of political, economic, and social history, examining African American civil service workers' attempts to navigate the shifting sands of racial segregation and patronage politics. In so doing, it complicates and clarifies historical understandings of the theory as well as the practice of Jim Crow, particularly in the nation's capital. Drawing on a wealth of archival and manuscript collections, as well as government documents, Yellin makes the case that racial discrimination on the state and federal levels did not completely thwart employment opportunities for black Americans. Despite the arrival of Jim Crow in Washington after 1912, African Americans remained well represented in federal employment. Yellin's work asserts and demonstrates that African Americans were never simply passive victims; they attempted to bend traditions of patronage to their benefit. Moreover, they exercised political agency in resisting white supremacist threats to their employment and acts of humiliation and intimidation in the workplace. In this sense, Yellin's examination continues important revisionist work on race relations in the era between Reconstruction and the Great Depression, showing that the system of political patronage, and progressive critiques that sought to regulate and purify politics, often did so in overtly and covertly racist ways.

Expanding on seminal works on the “color line” in the nation's capital, including Constance Green's The Secret City; and, more recently, Kate Masur's An Example for All the Land, the monograph integrates a chorus of voices (particularly African American) to the often complicated political negotiation involved in gaining access to and advancing in civil service/government work during the early twentieth century.Footnote ¹ Moreover, it demonstrates how de jure segregation and racism was translated into discriminatory de facto practice through formal and informal directives such as memos and letters, the official reclassification of individuals, and the unofficial phasing out of individual positions and entire departments.

Despite his thorough chronicling of the silencing and even outright removal of African American government employees from traditional positions, Yellin demonstrates that the process of rendering these vocal workers less visible was neither static nor consistent. He goes further to show that not only was Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) not the critical moment in the resegregation of the capital, but that there may not have been one specific tipping point in the decline of the acceptance of black civil service workers by their white counterparts and superiors. Instead the minimization of workers such as Swan Kendrick, William Jennifer, Minnie Cox, A. L. Tilghman, George Harris Cox, Thomas H. R. Clarke, and Shelby Davidson resulted both from traditional patronage machinations as well as the supposedly “color-blind” application of growing progressive impulses. Such impulses, accompanying Wilson's (and the Democratic Party's) rise, emphasized notions of individual merit, workplace harmony, and efficiency, interpreted in racialized ways.

The monograph begins by discussing the historical antecedents that influenced black civil service work during the early twentieth century and anticipating some of their long-term implications. Yellin describes, for example, the political activism of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) on behalf of black civil servants in the District of Columbia at the turn of the century. He highlights several African-American powerbrokers and sympathetic white activists who served as key conduits between the federal government and African American communities. African American leaders such as Archibald Grimke, William Monroe Trotter, Booker T. Washington, and W. Calvin Chase seemed to gain greater access to the White House, even while seemingly exercising less political influence.

In subsequent chapters, Yellin reintroduces President Woodrow Wilson, whose election in 1912 marks a pivotal moment in the history of black civil service work. “The standard narrative about racism and the U.S. civil service in the early twentieth century is that Woodrow Wilson, a southern Democrat, segregated black workers in federal offices in 1913” (1). But, Yellin argues, “the real story is not so simple” (2). Integrating a wide array of sources, Yellin offers a nuanced examination of Wilson's policies in relation to black civil service workers in the nation's capital. Chapters 4 through 6 are the heart of the book, providing a compelling account of how Wilson and other progressives juxtaposed notions of governmental efficiency with rising white supremacist imperatives.

There are few shortcomings in this book. Perhaps the most glaring issue is the lack of a fully developed gender analysis. In what ways might Wilson's own progressive rhetoric of managerial efficiency be read in terms of masculine as well as racial control? Normative notions of efficiency and the “natural order” of things would have been further illuminated with analysis of their possible patriarchal as well as racial underpinnings. The text would have also benefited from a more detailed discussion of the impact of World War I on race relations and federal employment during early resegregation. But the strengths of the text far outweigh these concerns. Yellin's work is lucid and illuminating. He provides a thorough, readable, and well-rounded narrative filled with vivid examples and sharp analysis. His balanced portrayal of Woodrow Wilson is especially commendable. In Yellin's work, Wilson is neither fully exonerated nor made a scapegoat. And in fact, he shows that the process of segregation began long before Wilson, under earlier Republication administrations.

While it might have been tempting to discredit Wilson as a true progressive, given the increasing manifestations of racial inequality in government and the major hit that African American political aspirations and economic security would take in the nation's capital, a simplistic analysis tracing fault solely back to Wilson would have constituted a major shortcoming. The fact that racism clothed in progressive rhetoric was widely read as operating in the service of the nation at this key moment in United States history made it virtually impossible to defeat at that time. That so many black government workers heroically attempted to do so, despite long odds, is a story told in rich tones here, and it is a story in need of telling: one that helped set the stage for the large-scale African American political shifts that came with the Franklin Roosevelt era of the 1930s and 1940s, as well as the modern civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s.