Thread by @cjcmichel

Teddy Roosevelt: First president to host a Black man at the White House, yet someone who thought the 15th Amendment was a “mistake” and that 90% of Jim Crow was justified, with Black Americans “altogether inferior to the whites.”

Still strange the US’s crushing of Filipino independence efforts doesn’t have more resonance in 21st century America—everything from widespread use of water-boarding, to efforts to cover up torture reports by Roosevelt’s administration.

(These are from: penguinrandomhouse.com/books/117455/t…)

William Howard Taft, then overseeing the US’s imperial project in the Philippines, describing Filipinos in terms completely at odds with his jovial public reputation:

One underrated element of TR’s foreign policy: avoiding war over Venezuela with Germany, which had been planning out a possible invasion of the US(!!):

Teddy Roosevelt’s Sec of State on Russia: “Dealing with a government with whom mendacity is a science is an extremely difficult matter.” cc @seansrussiablog

One clear theme in Teddy Roosevelt’s willingness to interfere in Latin American affairs (Panama, Roosevelt Corollary): protection/expansion of “civilization,” and the responsibility of “civilized nations.”

Here’s Teddy Roosevelt laying the groundwork for progressive taxation “on all fortunes,” either as income/wealth tax or estate tax (cc @gabriel_zucman):

US-Japanese relations nearly collapsed (into potential war?) during Roosevelt’s tenure on account of racist, segregationist policy on the US West Coast aimed at Japanese Americans:

Teddy Roosevelt said the 15th Amendment was “very unjust and bad policy,” and that Black Americans were “two hundred thousand years behind”

Teddy Roosevelt during his second term “wrote that he saw no reason why ‘95% of [Black Americans]’ in the South should be allowed to vote.”