The Labor Department's engagement with the nation's Negroes developed in the context of an Administration that was at best unsympathetic to their rights and needs. The White House of Woodrow Wilson and the Executive branch were filled with conservative Southern Democrats, a group that also dominated Congress. Washington was resistant to meeting the rising expectations of the Negro community and workforce.

During the 1912 presidential campaign Wilson, a progressive Southern Democrat, had encouraged Negro support with vague promises to be "President of the whole nation" and to provide Negroes with "absolute fair dealing." He specifically promised that he would at least match past Republican appointments of Negroes to patronage positions. The NAACP endorsed Wilson and Negro groups worked vigorously for his election. Wilson's victory was mainly attributable to the Taft-Roosevelt split and the Negro vote was not decisive. Yet Negroes were proud of their involvement in the campaign and, heartened by the idealism of Wilson's inaugural address, looked forward to turning vague campaign promises into concrete advances for working Negroes and the whole race.

Hard political, social and racial realities lurked to counter this hopefulness once the inaugural euphoria dissipated. Wilson, despite his campaign promises of racial fairness, remained a man of the South and shared the paternalistic if benevolent racism of the men and women of his patrician class. Wilson also needed the support of Southern Democrats with strongly anti-Negro views if his ambitious program of progressive economic reform was to be enacted. This was his over-riding goal and, as historian Kendrick Clements wrote, "Wilson's attitude was always that there were more important issues to be pursued than racial justice."

Anti-Negro forces soon held the upper hand in Washington and Jim Crow began to hold sway. Negro patronage declined markedly from the low, token levels of previous Administrations. Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan broke a precedent of many years by appointing a white as ambassador to Haiti. Wilson himself appointed only two Negroes in his first two years in office while allowing a total of 12 positions filled by Negroes appointed by President Taft to lapse into white hands.

Patronage had an important but largely symbolic value to the Negro community, whereas the government's treatment of its own Negro workers had a direct impact. At a Cabinet meeting early in the Administration, Southern members expressed disingenuous concern over alleged friction between Negro and white government employees. Postmaster General Albert S. Burleson, a Texan, proposed segregating the races to eliminate the supposed problem. Secretary of the Treasury William Gibbs McAdoo supported him. Burleson also claimed support for the idea from moderate Negro leaders such as Bishop Alexander Walters, president of the National Colored Democratic League. The rest of the Cabinet, along with the President, while not explicitly endorsing segregation, did not oppose it.

Some departments adopted the policy with a vengeance. Burleson immediately set out on a program to segregate, downgrade and, in some cases, discharge Negro workers. All of them but one were transferred to the dead letter office, and the Negro who remained had the humiliating experience of being surrounded by screens so that white workers would not have to look at him. Burleson also ordered segregated window service to the public. Fortunately segregation was not widely adopted elsewhere in the federal government. Many departments either failed to institute the practice or actively resisted it. Assistant Secretary of Labor Louis F. Post was a founder of the NAACP and his department was another that remained relatively free of the taint of Jim Crow.