The inspiration for today's blog entry came as I was reading Erik Larson's 2003 bestseller, The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America. This National Book Award finalist chronicles the stories of two very different men--Daniel Burnham, an architect of the White City at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, and Dr. H.H. Holmes, a serial killer who used the fair to find his victims. I’m only 100 pages in, but so far, it is a good read. I chose this book because one of my graduate school classes covered the fair, and I found it, as well as the era in which it occurred, fascinating. If you would like to learn more about the Columbian Exposition, take a look at these websites:
World's Columbian Exposition: Idea, Experience, Aftermath
Interactive Guide to the World's Columbian Exposition
World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893 (Paul V. Gavin Library Digital History Collection, Illinois Institute of Technology)

The 1893 World's Columbian Exposition was a showcase for the United States and the city of Chicago. The planners wanted to outshine the 1889 fair in Paris and prove to the rest of the country, and New York in particular, that Chicago was not “a secondary city that that preferred butchered hogs to Beethoven” (Larson 16). The fair included not only the White City, which exhibited advancements in technology and the liberal arts, but also the Midway Plaisance, hosting entertainment and “anthropologic” reproductions of villages from around the world. With participants from abroad, an American Indian village in the Midway and a women's building in the White City, the fair seemed to have something for everyone. Missing, however, were African Americans.

The planners of the fair did not invite African Americans to participate in the festivities. Although they petitioned for inclusion, black Americans did not have a building or a special day set aside. This angered many prominent African Americans, including Frederick Douglass and Ida B. Wells. Wells was a teacher, writer, and activist who crusaded against lynching. In 1893, she, along with Douglass and others, wrote an 81-page pamphlet titled The Reason Why the Colored American Is Not in the World’s Columbian Exposition--The Afro-American’s Contribution to Columbian Literature. In the preface, the authors write, “The exhibit of the progress made by a race in 25 years of freedom as against 250 years of slavery would have been the greatest tribute to the greatness and progressiveness of American institutions which could have been shown to the world” (Wells, xx). Apparently, the directors did not share that sentiment.

Despite the official exclusion of African-Americans, Frederick Douglass did have a role at the fair. The country of Haiti asked Douglass, who had been the United States’ minister to the country, to represent the Haitian government. This gave Douglass a forum, and he and Wells took advantage of it. They circulated ten thousand copies of their booklet and spoke with many people. Due to the popularity of Haiti’s building among not only black Americans, but also white Americans and foreign visitors, Douglas was asked to organize a Negro Day for the fair’s program. Although Wells and other “hotheads” believed that Douglass should not have accepted the belated invitation, she admits, “Mr. Douglass’s oration was a masterpiece of wit, humor, and actual statement of conditions under which the Negro race of this country labored” (Wells, 115-119). Ultimately, she was pleased with his efforts.

Many students across the country think that history is irrelevant and boring. They may not realize that while names, dates, battles, and laws are important, there is much more to history. A fair-- the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition --probably will not appear on a test, but it is significant. In the context of black history, it demonstrates that African Americans actively combated racism long before Martin Luther King, Jr., and their history is more than slavery and the Civil Rights Movement.

Sources:

Larson, Erik. The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America. New York: Vintage Books, 2003.

Wells, Ida B. Crusade for Justice: The Autobiography of Ida B. Wells. Edited by Alfreda M. Duster. Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1970.