Black Americans in the White City: African Americans at the World's Columbian Exposition

Poster for the Fair Declaring "All Nations are Welcome."
While the Fair claimed to be representative of all peoples, it was actually extremely discriminatory to certain groups.

Introduction
The World’s Columbian Exposition was predominately a white American project run and monitored by white Americans. While there are countless points of interest in terms of racial and ethnic tension at the fair, perhaps the most interesting is the treatment, and exclusion of, African Americans.

The 1893 Chicago World’s Fair was the first major national event since the Civil War thirty years earlier. The question of African American involvement in the fair was thus one of tremendous significance. African Americans saw the fair as an opportunity to show how much they had contributed to the United States since their emancipation, and to set the tone for equal treatment in the years to come. White Americans, however, were hesitant to include African Americans as equals in the festivities. Racism were omnipresent in America and at the fair, and the White reluctance to represent Blacks as a part of American culture spoke to the lack of social progress the nation had made since the war, despite the progress made in countless other fields. Thus, while white Americans saw the Exposition as a time to show their industrial, societal, and economic progress to the world, and to prove themselves as a modern forward-moving nation, they failed to recognize equal treatment of African Americans as part of that progress.

The battle between the African American desire for respect and the rampant white American racism of the period took place in the microcosm of the fair in countless ways, both subtly and blatantly.

African American Exclusion at the Fair

Racism in America at the end of the 19th century was ubiquitous. Black Americans were rarely seen as equals to their white counterparts, and African Americans struggled for respect in nearly every domain. The year before the fair saw the highest ever number of lynchings yet recorded. Thus, African Americans not only fought for respect, they fought for their lives. In response, African Americans fled the South for slightly more tolerant Northern cities. At the time of the fair, Chicago harbored a growing community of Black Americans.

Yet, despite the growing number of African Americans in the North, and the substantial help of African American laborers in the construction of the fairgrounds, African Americans were not allowed to participate in the official boards of authority at the fair. No African American men were allowed to join the National Board of Commissioners, and no African American women were let into the Lady Board of Managers.

Black Americans were even denied admission to the Columbian Guard, the elite police force designed to protect visitors inside the fair. When African Americans tried out for positions within the guard, they were met with objections to their weight, height, or health, and were refused the job. Of the 2,000 openings within the guard, every one went to a white man.

Even more astonishing, African Americans were not recognized in the fair's displays. Of the 65,000 exhibits at the fair, not one was dedicated to African Americans of African American progress. Thus, at the fair, the majority of African American involvement in the fair was as low level workers, waiters, janitors, and as guests.

Limited Involvement

That is not to say, however, that African Americans were not present at all in the fair. There were some ways in which Black Americans were represented.

Nancy Green, the original "Aunt Jemima" posing with the product.

The most enduring black representation at the fair came in the form of a degrading advertising campaign by the now famous company, Aunt Jemima. The company was the first to invent the concept of ready-made pancake mix and decided that they wanted a black female to unveil and promote their concept to the world.  They chose, as their representative, Nancy Green, a former Kentucky slave renowned for her friendly attitude and fantastic cooking. At the fair, Green occupied a booth in which she cooked and served pancakes for hundreds of guests each day. Fairgoers loved Green, and such a massive crowd developed that the company had to call for crowd control. Green walked away from the fair with lifetime contract and having sold 50,000 orders of pancake mix. In the ad campaign, Green wears a headscarf and friendly smile as she serves up a pancake. That the most accepted representation of African Americans was one which depicted a black exclusively in the realm of the kitchen, literally serving whites, speaks to the blatant presence of racism.

19th Century Advertisement for Aunt Jemima Pancake Mix

While there was no official pavilion or exhibit for African Americans at the fair, Frederick Douglas managed to take over the Haitian Pavilion and turn it into the unofficial center for African American activity and representation. Douglas’ reaction to exclusion from the fair, unlike some of his black contemporaries, was to push harder for representation and inclusion. He had himself appointed as Haiti’s commissioner to the World’s Fair. He invited important black individuals to visit and speak, and used the pavilion as a hub to pass out pamphlets protesting black exclusion and racism. That African Americans could only find a space at the fair by stealing the identity of another nation is sad proof of their unfortunate exclusion from the fair in an official manner.

Group of Men of Mandingo Tribe. Photograph. 1893.
National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution.

The presence of Black Africans on the midway also showed the distorted white view of blacks at the fair. The portrayal of Africans on the midway was often degrading and racist. Tribes from Africa were shipped and displayed to give Americans a picture of what these “savages” lived like. Americans came away from these exhibits with the view that African tribes were primitive, barbaric, and uneducated. Journalists and photographers latched onto these exhibits, further propagating this view of Africans. To this day, racist views of African tribes can be traced back to the propaganda distributed by journalists at the time.

Protesting Black Exclusion: Id B. Wells

The African American response to their exclusion from the fair and the omnipresent racism was divided. Some continued to attempt to gain representation at the fair, and to some degree succeeded. While others responded by boycotting the fair and using the moment to protest racism in general. 

 

Ida B. Wells Portrait Photograph. 1893. National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution.

Ida B. Wells, a prominent African American journalist and activist, decided take the root of protest against the fair. Wells had just returned from a tour of England in which she spoke out against lynching and racism in the United States. She had seen that the international perception of African Americans was as simpleminded and unsophisticated people, a view which had been propagated by the American portrayal of black individuals. She thus saw it as her duty to use the fair as an opportunity to prove to the world that African Americans were intellectuals who had added to the progress of the nation since their emancipation. When she found that African Americans were not even given the opportunity to participate, she reacted in anger and frustration, and turned to protest the fair itself.

Title Page of Ida B. Well's Pamphlet Protesting the Fair

One method in which she protested the fair was her publication and distribution of the pamphlet “The Reason Why the Colored American is not in the World’s Columbian Exposition.”  The Pamphlet contained chapters by important figures such as Frederick Douglas, Irvine Garland Penn, and Lee Barnett, and was distributed throughout the duration of the fair from the Haitian Pavilion. The eloquence of the pamphlet’s authors proved the intellectual capacity of African Americans, while the subjects they touched on outlined African American achievements and the unjust lack of rights blacks suffered in America as well as the immediate insult of their lack of inclusion in World's Fair. Wells contributed her own chapter, in which she wrote about the horrific pattern of lynching taking place in America and demanded a national response.

“Colored Day”

In response to the black outrage and protest of the fair, the fair administrators attempted to allay them with “Colored Day,” a day in which all African Americans were receive free admission and in which their contributions to the nation would be celebrated. Upon their free admission, each African American visitor unbelievably received a free slice of watermelon, displaying that even in an attempt to be inclusive, the fair administrators remained blatantly racist.

Darkies Day at the World Fair, Frederick Burr Opper, c. 1893, lithograph, color. 

Several African American individuals jumped at the opportunity to represent their beliefs and be included, while others boycotted the day as a last ditch attempt by administrators to make up for their unforgivable racism. Among those who refused to attend were the famous coloratura soprano Sissieretta Jones and former U.S. representative John Mercer Langston.  Ida B Wells also boycotted the event in protest. In a scathing editorial, she declared Colored Day a “stinging insult” and a “humiliation to the race” and declared herself “thoroughly disgusted” with the entire celebration.

Those African Americans who did attend, however, made sure to use the chance to speak out in support of black rights and accomplishments. Frederick Douglas gave a well-received speech in which he rejected the concept of a “Nego problem,” and told his fellow Americans that there was only a “national problem.” He demanded that Americans recognized the progress of African Americans since the abolition of slavery without merely comparing them to their white counterparts. “Measure the Negro," he said, "but not by the standard of the splendid civilization of the Caucasian. Bend down and measure him – measure him – from the depths out of which he has risen.”

Frederick Douglas. (1818-1895) Photograph, albumen silver print. c. 1879.

“There is no negro problem. The problem is whether the American people have honesty enough, loyalty enough, honor enough, patriotism enough to live up to their own Constitution.” - Frederick Douglas

Also featured at Colored Day was music by Fisk Jubilee Singers, who sang slavery songs, and poetry by the famous African American poet, Paul Laurence Dunbar, who read his original poem, “The Colored Soldiers.”

The Fisk Jubilee Singers Posing at the World Fair

Conclusion

On the whole, the unwillingness of white Americans to celebrate and include their black counterparts at the 1893 World’s Fair speaks to the inherent contradictions of the “progress” the Fair hoped to convey to the world. Thirty years had passed since the abolition of slavery, and while Americans had made huge strides in terms of transportation, industrialization, and economy, American views on African Americans had remained pretty much stagnant. Not only were Americans reluctant to display the progress of African Americans at the fair, they were not even ashamed of their unwillingness to do so; it is perhaps America’s blindness to their unsophisticated view of race, their inability to view racism as a flaw in the nation, that is the most disturbing aspect of the fair. The 1893 Columbus Exposition was proud of its progress, its modernity, and its industrialization, without feeling any remorse for the blatant presence of racism. The White City was thus unapologetic and backwards in its blatant rejection of Black Americans.

Resources

Ballard, Barbara J.  A People Without a Nation.  Chicago History Magazine. Print. 1999.

Early Chicago: The 1893 World’s Fair. Chicago Public Media Television Interactive. Web. 2015.

Hine, Darlene Clark. Black Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia. Volumes 1 and 2, Carlson Publishing Inc., Brooklyn, New York. Web. 1993.

Reed, Christopher Robert. The Black Presence at the “White City”: African and African American Participation at the World’s Columbian Exposition, Chicago. Illinois Institute of Technology. Web. March 8, 1999.

Opper, Frederick Burr. Darkie’s Day at the Fair. Library of Congress. Illustration. 1893.