ATDTDA (1): "White City"

[Dave Monroe]

On 1/25/07, Tim Strzechowski <dedalus204 at comcast.net> wrote:
>
> "Observers of the Fair had remarked how, as one moved up and down its
> Midway, the more European, civilized, and . . . well, frankly, white
> exhibits located closer to the center of the "White City" seemed to be,
> whereas the farther from that alabaster Metropolis one ventured, the more
> evident grew the signs of cultural darkness and savagery" (p. 22).

See, e.g., ...

Christopher Robert Reed, "The Black Presence at 'White City'"

http://columbus.iit.edu/reed2.html

How Did African-American Women Define Their Citizenship at the Chicago
World's Fair in 1893?

http://www.binghamton.edu/womhist/ibw/doclist.htm

Book Review

"All the World Is Here!" The Black Presence at White City. By
Christopher Robert Reed.

http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/jah/88.3/br_66.html

Ida B. Wells, The Reason Why the Colored American is not in the
World's Columbian Exposition (1893)

http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/wells/exposition/exposition.html

Amina Gautier, African American Women's Writings in the Woman's Building Library

This article surveys six African American women whose work was
represented in the Woman's Building Library exhibit at the Columbian
Exposition: Elleanor Eldridge, Victoria Earle, A. Julia Foote, Frances
Harper, Henrietta Cordelia Ray, and T. T Purvis. These women's
writings cover a variety of genres and styles from novels, short
stories, poems, sketches, autobiographies, rhymes, and essays that
address such topics as suffrage, partnership, a woman's marital
rights, and black enterprise and entrepreneurship.

http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/libraries_and_culture/v041/41.1gautier.pdf

http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/libraries_and_culture/v041/41.1gautier.html

David J. Cope, "African-Americans in 'The White City'"

http://www.jimcrowhistory.org/resources/pdf/hs_lp_columbianexposition.pdf

... where the Fair succeeded for women, it failed for the large
African-American population in Chicago and the United States.
Christopher Reed notes that, though there were some African Americans
involved in the Fair at various levels from administration to
demonstration, the over-all display failed to honor the achievements
of African-Americans. This led to the summer publication of the
pamphlet, The Reason Why the Colored American is Not in the World's
Columbian Exposition, which spurred a series of protests. The Fair
became a site for African-American activism, where political rights
and representation were demanded before the tribunal of the entire
world.

http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/comparative_literature_studies/v042/42.2fojas.html#REF44

http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/comparative_literature_studies/v042/42.2fojas.html

The Midways were not fun for everyone, though. African-Americans,
while free to come and go like anyone else, were made to feel
unwelcome. Unlike the exhibits celebrating the achievements of other
cultures, fake "African villages," according to Frederick Douglass,
had a very different purpose: "to exhibit the Negro as a repulsive
savage." At the Chicago fair, even Douglass's effort to highlight the
progress of African Americans since the abolition of slavery
backfired, as organizers turned "Colored People's Day" into a cruel
joke by offering free watermelons to African American fairgoers. As
examples like this show, the World's Fairs were -- for better and for
worse -- true expressions of their age.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/houdini/peopleevents/pande08.html

The African American community hoped that they could take part in the
Fair and highlight the advances they had made, economically and
creatively, in the thirty years since emancipation. However, once
again they were denied a voice in the Fair's creation and African
America exhibits had to be approved by all-white screening committees
before they were accepted for display. The response among the African
American community was mixed. Two factions, one led by Frederick
Douglass, the revered abolitionist, the other by Ida B. Wells, the
crusading African American journalist, disagreed as to whether the
Fair should be boycotted or accommodated . Douglass, who advised
Blacks to regard the Fair as an opportunity to show how far African
Americans had progressed since emancipation, made a moving speech
against American racism on Jubilee Day, a day set aside for Black
visitors. Unfortunately, the Columbian and the subsequent Fairs
remained overwelmingly racist.

http://www.lib.udel.edu/ud/spec/exhibits/fairs/colum.htm

As tensions between the White City and the Midway Plaisance made
clear, the World's Columbian Exposition reflected broader struggles in
American society over the future course of American society and
culture. Concerns about the power of the exposition to shape the
future were also apparent in the struggles fought by African Americans
and women over their representation at the fair.

The whiteness of the White City became increasingly offensive to
African Americans as plans for the fair unfolded. In response to the
determination of African Americans to show the world their
accomplishments since emancipation, exposition directors insisted that
African American proposals for exhibits be approved by all-white state
committees. Most such requests were rejected out of hand. In response
to requests from African Americans that they receive a role in
planning the fair, exposition authorities appointed a St. Louis school
principal to the position of alternate on the national commission.
Enraged by the politics of exclusion and tokenism, some African
Americans, led by Ida B. Wells, urged African Americans to boycott the
fair. Frederick Douglass, who served as Haiti's representative at the
exposition, disagreed and urged African Americans to participate as
fully as possible. When exposition managers set aside a special
"colored American" day (white ethnic groups had their own days as
well), Douglass seized the occasion to insist that Americans live up
to the Constitution and their promises of social justice for former
slaves. But the fair, through its racist policies, had already helped
pave the way for national acceptance of the separate-but-equal
doctrine that would become the law of the land in 1896.

http://www.encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org/pages/1386.html

African Americans at the Columbian Exposition
Christopher Reid of Roosevelt U. in his two books, "All the World is
Here," The Black Presence at the White City and Black Chicago's First
Century, shows that not all African Americans joined Ida B. Wells in
protesting and boycotting the Fair, nor was there a universal ban on
their presence but that African Americans were a significant presence,
from 1 in a key administrative position and many participating in the
symposia and exhibits, to labor.

There have to have been African Americans in the city and especially
the South Side at the time for presence to have been debatable.
African Americans after the era of DuSable were a small percentage of
the population of the boom town, but here nonetheless. As early as the
1880s they were observed to be using Washington Park and especially
Washington Park Racetrack, where some worked.

Participants at the Fair included

workers who cleared the site,
the Ferris Wheel operator,
directions-givers (although they were excluded from the Columbian Guard),
chair boys/cart pushers,
carpenters (ultimately excluded),
artists who were African American as exhibitors (Henry Mc Neil
Tanner's "First Lesson on the Bagpipe" and put art on plants
displays),
scientists- George Washington Carver,
performances- 1000 uniformed Knights of Pythias from Mississippi and
black cowboys at the opening,
speakers at conferences- Booker T. Washington on labor, Ida B. Wells ,
____Bishop on God is Black, Fanny B. Williams, a conference on black
women writers, and an 8 day conference on whether African Americans
should stay in America. At least 6 black women spoke. (W.E.B. Dubois
was in Germany at the time.)

http://www.hydepark.org/historicpres/ColumbianExp.htm#AA