The World’s Fair that Ignored More than Half the World.

The spectacle of the World's Columbian Exposition of 1893 was unrivaled in its time. But it hardly represented the "world" of Women and Negroes.

Between May and October of 1893, the nation and the world flocked to the exposition, often called the Chicago World's Fair or the "White City," for the white stucco that gave the whole exposition a marmoreal gleam. More than 27 million people attended during a worldwide financial depression named the 'Panic of 1893' — which was nearly one-half the population of the United States at that time. This was no private Coachella or Aspen Institute—Congress appropriated the initial funding, and the fair's governing board was appointed by the president.

The Lady Managers were as powerless as their name suggests and couldn't get women's accomplishments included in any exhibits outside of the Woman's Building.

But neither women nor Negroes were part of the project's planning stages, nor were they allowed to play any prominent roles in the substance of the exposition, write Elliott Rudwick and August Meier. White women, Negro men and women all lobbied the president for seats on the governing board, jobs, and more than token representation in the fair, to no avail. They didn't have much leverage: In 1893, white men held almost all political power everywhere. No women served in Congress, and only in Wyoming (population 62,555) could women vote in federal elections. Reconstruction was long over; Negro men in the South could barely vote, and only one Negro man served in Congress.

But the World's Fair was too big to ignore.

Rather than include the full range of women's ingenuity, creativity, and hard work throughout the fair, the all-male Board of Governors approved "The Woman's Building" as a substitute and a "Board of Lady Managers" as a consolation prize for denying women even one seat on the board. As Gail Bederman explains, the Lady Managers were as powerless as their name suggests and couldn't get women's accomplishments included outside the Woman's Building.

Unfortunately, white women's limited role in the fair didn't make them sympathetic to the near-total exclusion of Negro women and men. Historian Ann Massa writes that when Negro women requested a seat among the 115 Lady Managers, the white women refused them. The white women complained that they couldn't pick from several groups of Negro women activists and thus would seat no one. They ultimately offered an unpaid secretarial role to Fannie Barrier Williams—a college graduate and accomplished educator. She was disgusted but took it because it was literally the only professional role a Negro woman would fill at the exposition. (The enterprise employed tens of thousands of people.)

In fact, Negro accomplishments weren't featured in the White City at all. Thirty years after the Emancipation Proclamation, the remarkable postbellum achievements of slavery's survivors were all but erased from the story of America. Among 65,000 exhibits, only a few tokens of Negro art and invention were grudgingly included, among them sculptor Edmonia Lewis's busts of Phillis Wheatley and Hiawatha. Even Frederick Douglass—the most famous Negro man in America—spoke publicly only on "Negro Day," a one-time marketing gimmick on August 25th targeting Negro fairgoers and anybody interested.

Amid more than 300 women speakers at the fair, only six Negro women—including the veteran activist Frances Ellen Watkins Harper and scholar Anna Julia Cooper—were given speaking spots throughout the summer, including during a week-long World Congress of Representative Women.

Ida B. Wells

Muckraking journalist Ida B. Wells had no platform at the fair, so she made her own. She had just returned from a successful British-speaking tour that helped her launch her anti-lynching crusade. She was furious about the exclusion of Negro accomplishments from a fair meant to showcase American exceptionalism. What better demonstration of America's uniqueness, Wells asked, than to exhibit "the progress made by the race in 25 years of freedom as against 250 years of slavery?"

ADDITIONAL READING:

Racism at Chicago's 1893 World's Columbian Exposition.

"Reasons Why the Colored American is not in the World's Columbian Exposition." by Ida B. Wells and Frederick Douglass, Published 1893.

Negroes at the 1893 World's Fair, A People Without a Nation.

Negro Day, August 25, 1893, at the World's Fair (aka Colored Peoples' Day).

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D.

Chicago's Urban Renewal into the 1960s.

Following World War II and continuing into the late 1960s, "urban renewal" referred primarily to public efforts to revitalize aging and decaying inner cities, although some suburban communities undertook such projects as well. Including massive demolition, slum clearance, and rehabilitation, urban renewal proceeded initially from local and state legislation, which in Illinois included the Neighborhood Redevelopment Corporation Act of 1941 (amended in 1953), the Blighted Areas Redevelopment Act of 1947 (which allowed for clearing land for non-residential uses, including highways), the Relocation Act of 1947, and the Urban Community Conservation Act of 1953. 

The earliest emphasis was placed on slum clearance or "redevelopment," followed by a focused effort to conserve 'threatened' but not yet deteriorated neighborhoods. Significant clearing of homes would occur with the 1955 Amendment to the Blighted Areas Redevelopment Act of 1947. It allowed for clearing land for non-residential uses, including highways.

The new legislation had three primary functions. First, it expanded the city's power of eminent domain and enabled it to seize property for the new "public purposes" of slum clearance or prevention. Second, it pioneered the "write-down" formula, which permitted the city to convey such property to private developers at its significantly reduced "use" value after the municipality subsidized its purchase and preparation. Last, the state provided assistance in relocating site residents—an absolute necessity in a time of severe housing shortages to enable the clearance of crowded, inner-city sites. The federal Housing Acts of 1949 and 1954, and their later amendments, mirrored the Illinois initiatives, providing a national framework and greater financial resources for the renewal effort. The clear intent was to offer public assistance to the private sector in the hope of heading off an urban crisis.

As early as 1943, a Chicago Plan Commission survey had found 242,000 substandard housing units within a 23-square-mile zone of "blight," with the most desperate conditions extending in a sweeping arc south and west of the Loop. Another 100,000 such units were scattered across Chicago in "non-blighted" areas. Such conditions, combined with the decentralizing pull of the burgeoning suburbs, threatened to ravage the city's tax base, deplete the stock of middle-class consumers, and raise the cost of basic city services such as police and firefighting. Worried about rising taxes, declining property values, and their traditional source of shoppers and workers, Loop interests such as Marshall Field & Co. and the Chicago Title and Trust Company moved swiftly to design plans to enhance downtown. Within weeks of his 1947 inauguration, Mayor Martin H. Kennelly received a housing program and legislative package that had gestated (develop over a long period) in Loop boardrooms.

Major institutional interests on the South Side, such as the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) and Michael Reese Hospital, also faced the daunting prospect of surviving within rapidly deteriorating neighborhoods. Even before World War II, they had recommitted themselves to the area, and, in 1946, they joined other local interests to create the South Side Planning Board (SSPB). Staking out a planning interest of seven square miles from Cermak Road south to 47th Street and from Michigan Avenue west to the Pennsylvania Railroad, their efforts—along with those of their Loop counterparts—enticed the New York Life Insurance Company to finance the Lake Meadows development. Michael Reese Hospital soon followed with its own Prairie Shores complex; IIT expanded its campus from 7 to 110 acres; Mercy Hospital decided to remain and grow in the area; and South Commons was developed as a middle-income housing enclave.

The population of Washington Park peaked at around 56,000 in 1950. There were significant overcrowding issues, but without other affordable housing options available because of racist policies and practices, many Negro residents on the South Side were forced into unsafe, egregiously overcrowded housing spaces.

The University of Chicago took the initiative in the urban renewal of Hyde Park, as it did with the conception and enactment of the Illinois Urban Community Conservation Act of 1953, a law precisely tailored to the institution's needs. Proceeding in stages throughout the 1950s under earlier redevelopment acts and through the South East Chicago Commission (SECC), the university responded forcefully to a racial transition accelerated by clearance projects to its north. The city approved a general renewal plan for Hyde Park– Kenwood in 1958 after the SECC had removed the worst pockets of "blight" and prevented precipitous "white flight." By 1970, the university and various public agencies had invested some $100 million in the area—an amount augmented by an additional $300 million in private funds.

The Urban Renewal program in Hyde Park displaces businesses and residents.

The largest renewal site north of the Loop provided space for Carl Sandburg Village between Division Street and North Avenue and, roughly, Clark and LaSalle. Most of the displaced residents were unmarried white renters without deep roots in the neighborhood. Demolition proceeded in 1960–61, with Arthur Rubloff & Co. beginning construction the next year. At its completion in 1969, the combination of high-rise towers and townhouses encompassed 3,166 units. At the same time, on the Near West Side, Mayor Richard J. Daley tried to protect the Loop, fight decentralization, and enhance Chicago's image by building a campus of the University of Illinois in the Harrison-Halsted area. Sparking considerable grassroots protest, the project displaced thousands of individuals and hundreds of businesses in an old, largely Italian community before it opened in 1965.

Concern with protecting and enhancing Chicago's core also generated a construction boom within the Loop itself. Beginning with the opening of the Prudential building in 1957, a 20-year burst of activity nearly doubled downtown office space; the federal government, Cook County, and the city of Chicago each added massive administrative centers.

The neighborhoods, however, experienced a different kind of transformation. While whites were among those uprooted in Hyde Park and on the North and West Sides, urban renewal in this context too often meant, as contemporaries noted, "Negro removal." Between 1948 and 1963 alone, some 50,000 families (averaging 3.3 members) and 18,000 individuals were displaced. Old neighborhoods disappeared, and new ones faced increasing racial pressures. Although some urban renewal sites were redeveloped for institutional expansion or middle-class housing, displaced African Americans received little benefit from the program. The city tried to contain the expansion of Blacks' living space, in part, by using densely packed, centrally located high-rise public housing. Segregation became public policy, as the courts acknowledged in deciding the 1966 suit brought by Chicago Housing Authority (CHA) resident Dorothy Gautreaux. In 1969, federal district court Judge Richard Austin found that 99 percent of the residents of CHA family housing were Black and that 99.5 percent of such units were confined to Black or racially changing areas. Rather than solve the urban crisis, urban renewal had set the stage for its next phase.

By Arnold R. Hirsch

Edited by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D.

Negro owned Chicago repair and gunsmith shop, 1899.

The only Negro owned gunsmith shop in the U.S., in 1899, was located at 2933 South State Street, Chicago, Illinois.

The Negro owner is in front of the counter.

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D.

Removal of the "African Dip" dunk tank game from Riverview Amusement Park in Chicago, Illinois.

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In historical writing and analysis, PRESENTISM introduces present-day ideas and perspectives into depictions or interpretations of the past. Presentism is a form of cultural bias that creates a distorted understanding of the subject matter. Reading modern notions of morality into the past is committing the error of presentism. Historical accounts are written by people and can be slanted, so I try my hardest to present fact-based and well-researched articles.

Facts don't require one's approval or acceptance.

I present [PG-13] articles without regard to race, color, political party, or religious beliefs, including Atheism, national origin, citizenship status, gender, LGBTQ+ status, disability, military status, or educational level. What I present are facts — NOT Alternative Facts — about the subject. You won't find articles or readers' comments that spread rumors, lies, hateful statements, and people instigating arguments or fights.

FOR HISTORICAL CLARITY

When I write about the INDIGENOUS PEOPLE, I follow this historical terminology:

• The use of old commonly used terms, disrespectful today, i.e., REDMAN or REDMEN, SAVAGES, and HALF-BREED are explained in this article.

Writing about AFRICAN-AMERICAN history, I follow these race terms:

• "NEGRO" was the term used until the mid-1960s.
• "BLACK" started being used in the mid-1960s.
• "AFRICAN-AMERICAN" [Afro-American] began usage in the late 1980s.

— PLEASE PRACTICE HISTORICISM —

THE INTERPRETATION OF THE PAST IN ITS OWN CONTEXT.

 

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Nationally, in August of 1963, over 200,000 blacks and whites had marched on Washington, D.C., and heard Martin Luther King, Jr.'s stirring "I Have a Dream" speech. President John F. Kennedy promised sweeping new civil rights legislation but was assassinated in Dallas that November. The new president, Lyndon Johnson, however, made good on Kennedy's promise; the most comprehensive civil rights act in U.S. history was pushed through Congress in the first half of 1964.

Riverview Amusement Park, Chicago, Illinois.

Locally, 1963 had been the year the civil rights movement came home to Chicago. Independent black aldermanic candidates challenged the Daley machine in the February elections. The Mayor himself was booed off the stage at an NAACP rally in Grant Park. A "brush-fire" of sit-in demonstrations erupted at South Side classrooms in protest of school segregation, culminating in a one-day school boycott, when virtually every black student in the system stayed home and thousands of protesters marched on City Hall.

These events had particular resonance at Riverview. Six days after the start of the 1964 season, Chicago Daily News columnist Mike Royko reported that—after 55 years—"The Dip" game had been removed from the park. [Daily News, 5/21/64]

Forest Park Amusement Park, Forest Park, Illinois.

This sideshow dunk tank game was once reportedly called, “Dunk the N***er,” later “The African Dip,” and finally “The Dip.” The black men would tease, provoke and otherwise try to disrupt the pitcher’s aim. The Blacks were careful not to say anything too insulting, lest they stir up the racism (and provoke violence) that was at the heart of the game. But they would and could get away with belittling their adversaries’ athletic skill or throwing ability in a way that was amusing. If their comments (i.e. If you were heavy, they’d call you "meatball." If you were with a girl, they might have said something like, "Hey fella, that ain’t the same girl you were with yesterday!") distracted the player, got them to laugh, or the crowd to laugh at the player, or caused the hurler to lose concentration, chances were the player would pony-up more money for another go at the game.

Park publicist Dorothy Strong told Royko: "...the man who had that concession was elderly. He just wanted to give it up and retire. He said he had had it and was tired. I think he said something about going to Florida." But Royko found the concessionaire, George F. Starr, at home in suburban Algonquin, and Starr said that Riverview had asked him to take out the Dip. "They were afraid of a boycott—afraid we'd have trouble—They claim they were getting letters from people who objected to the game." (In later years, this would be exaggerated into one of the major 'old wives' tales' of Riverview lore; that there were actual picket lines—organized by the NAACP, no less—protesting at the park till the Dip was removed. Nothing of the sort ever happened.)

To the end, Starr—whose father-in-law, Adolph Doerr, had started the concession at Riverview in 1909—didn't see anything wrong with the game, even claiming it was 'integrated': "We had white men working the counter—and colored boys working in the traps." When asked by Royko why he didn't fully integrate the Dips, using black and white men in the three cages, Starr replied he would have, but had only one dressing room. "You can't have whites and Negroes using the same dressing room," he said.

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D. 

The Pullman Story; A Brief Overview.

The first Pullman sleeping car, the "Pioneer," was constructed in 1864. Although not an immediate success, the Pioneer received national attention when transporting President Lincoln's body from Washington D.C. to Springfield, Illinois.

President Abraham Lincoln's Pullman Funeral Railcar, 1865.

The high demand for his cars led George Pullman to incorporate the Pullman Palace Car Company in February of 1867. It was first located in the third Tremont House (1850-1871) at 92 West Lake Street at Dearborn Street, Chicago.

Employing a primarily white workforce, the Pullman car transformed the experience of passenger railroad travel, setting a new standard. The company produced various cars, including sleeping, hotel, parlor, and dining cars. These were too expensive for railroad companies to purchase outright, so Pullman built his business model around leasing the cars and providing the employees necessary to serve passengers.

Demand for Pullman cars and a growing workforce led Pullman to the development of his company town. 

Early in 1880, Pullman sent Colonel James to secretly purchase 4,000 acres of land between Lake Calumet and the Illinois Central rail line for $800,000 ($21.5 million today). The property was acquired from 75 different owners. The actual site of the town, including the Pullman shops, did not occupy more than 300 acres. Housing for workers was separated from the industrial areas and took shape primarily as row houses with streets in front and alleys in the rear for daily trash collection. The streets were lit and had fire hydrants.

The original Town of Pullman was completed in 1884. The first permanent resident, the Benson family, moved into the town on January 1, 1881, at 11109 South St. Lawrence Avenue. By April, the Pullman car shops were in operation, and by May, more than 350 people lived in Pullman. 

Though Pullman provided a beautiful, sanitary, and orderly town for his workers and their families, George Pullman did not offer these accommodations freely because he believed that a person does not value those things for which they do not pay.

The average rent for three-room apartments was $8 to $8.50 ($172-$183 today). The rent for a five-room row house (with basement, bathroom, indoor toilet facilities, running water on two floors, gas, and sewers, advantages unheard of in other working-class areas of the city, was $18 per month ($387 today). 

The Town of Pullman Row Houses.

Larger homes for professionals and company officers began at $28 ($750 today). Rents were calculated to achieve a 6% return on the cost of the housing; however, the investment never earned more than 4½%.

The executive row was on 111th Street between St. Lawrence and Langley Avenues. Because the kind of housing and its location next to the plant were determined by status within the Pullman Company, these executive homes were nearest to the plant. It also made it possible for the executives to reach work without having to pass through the more modest residential areas to the south. Exterior and interior detail not found in many other Pullman houses made this row a showplace. The houses consisted of eight and nine rooms, renting for $28.00 to $50.00 ($750-$1,340 per month). All had a basement, several fireplaces, a dining room, and additional space in an attic.

Housing in the Town of Pullman was somewhat more expensive than in other parts of the city, but the housing quality was far superior to that available elsewhere.

By the fall of 1883, the population of Pullman topped 8,000. Ethnically diverse, less than half of Pullman residents in 1885 were native-born, most being immigrants from Scandinavia, Germany, England, and Ireland.

By 1885, 30,000 trees bordered the streets and parks — mostly white elm, maple, ash, and linden. To supply enough landscaping material for the community, six acres of land on the shores of Lake Calumet between 113th and 114th Streets were used for nursery and greenhouse space.

The Town of Pullman is distinct in that nearly all of this housing stands today more or less as it did initially.

Not all workers at the Pullman factories lived in Pullman. Out of necessity or choice, many moved out to the surrounding neighborhoods that developed. These neighborhoods provided places for single-denomination houses of worship, saloons, and property ownership that were not possible in Pullman.

The town attracted visitors, and during the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, visitors from near and far came to marvel at the town. Pullman did, however, have its detractors; labor leaders were mistrustful of the decidedly capitalist scheme, while other capitalists saw it as inviting trouble and doubted it could possibly be as profitable as George Pullman intended. It wasn't. Returns on the town never reached the six percent threshold promised to its investors. When one of the partners in Procter & Gamble approached George Pullman for advice on building a model town for a Cincinnati soap factory, he advised against the idea.

As Chicago was on display in the 1893 World's Fair, the grip of a financial crisis (the Panic of 1893) was closing around the country in general and the railroad industry in particular. Despite the stimulus provided by travelers from around the nation flocking to the fair itself, railroads had become mismanaged and overbuilt. Pullman's exhibits in the Transportation Building at the World's Columbian Exposition helped spur fairgoers to visit the Pullman neighborhood, and most found cause to praise George Pullman's grand experiment.

The World's Fair visitors did not see the annoyance of Pullman workers and residents at company paternalism and the red tape that festered under the surface. As 1893 wore on, orders at the factory declined. George Pullman cut wages as demand for new passenger cars plummeted and the company's revenue dropped. A delegation of workers complained that wages had been cut but not rents at their company housing or other costs in the company town. Since rents were deducted from paychecks, workers were left with what amounted to starvation wages. Pullman refused to lower rents or go to arbitration.

The Pullman workers, who had formed a grievance committee to negotiate with the company, were getting nowhere. Though the newly formed American Railway Union (A.R.U.) leadership advised against it, a strike broke out at the Pullman factories on May 11,1894.

The timing was unfortunate since the company could financially withstand a work stoppage by relying on existing leases. Against the might of the Pullman Company, the cause of the workers seemed hopeless. The Pullman Company continued to resist any concessions in negotiations with the strikers, trying to wait them out. So the A.R.U. decided to take a genuinely injurious action against the Pullman Company on a national scale: a boycott of the handling of Pullman cars by all A.R.U. workers.

Because Pullman cars were in such wide use, the boycott crippled rail traffic nationwide. Workers across the country had also seen wage reductions and had cause to take action. The size and scope of the A.R.U. was threatening to railroads. In response, the General Managers' Association, an industry group representing 24 railroads with terminals in Chicago, organized measures against the boycott. Those who walked off the job were replaced with strikebreakers, and the association tried to sway public opinion against the boycott through methods such as encouraging Pullman cars to be hitched to mail cars to disrupt delivery.

Through the disruption of the United States mail, the federal government was given an opening for intervention in the boycott and strike. The government was uncomfortable with the labor actions in general, part of growing apprehension about the laboring classes by those in the propertied class during the economic hardship. An injunction against the boycott was secured on the grounds of the violent nature of the strike and the threat to interstate commerce, citing the Sherman Anti-Trust Law of 1890, which ironically had been adopted to combat monopoly by big business.

Going over the head of Illinois Governor John Peter Altgeld, thousands of U.S. marshals and U.S. Army troops were deployed in what seemed an oversized response to the disturbance. In Chicago, mob activity increased with the military presence, with members from Pullman but many more from other southside neighborhoods. Back in Pullman, the Pullman Company strikers' plight had been overshadowed on the national stage by the boycott. Fighting between the military and workers at rail yards in the Chicago area left dozens dead and more wounded. The injunction led to the jailing of key leaders, weakening the A.R.U. and the strike.

With the government working to the General Managers' Association's ends, Debs felt the only way to force the Pullman Company into arbitration was by reaching out to other labor groups to join in a general strike, but his efforts did not succeed. The boycott dissolved in mid-July and the A.R.U. was defeated. For refusal to obey the injunction, Debs and others in the A.R.U. were indicted for contempt. In late July, President Grover Cleveland appointed a commission to investigate the strike and boycott.

Though public sentiment had been against the boycott, George Pullman was roundly criticized for the policies that led to the strike and his refusal to enter into arbitration with his workers. The situation for those in Pullman remained dire, and while little effort was made to evict residents or collect rent in arrears, destitution was widespread. However, in his testimony before the investigative commission, George Pullman defended his model town and his decisions, though they had led to a strike that ultimately damaged the company and the strikers and tarnished his image irreparably.

If George Pullman entertained any doubts about the wisdom of continuing the company town experiment, they were not reflected in his actions. Company ownership and concern with the town's appearance continued under Pullman's direction until he died in 1897. Tons of steel and concrete were placed over his casket to prevent labor radicals from desecrating the grave.

The impacts of the Pullman Strike were national in scope. As a massive and truly national strike, it demonstrated the power of national labor and forced consideration of labor action and corporate paternalism. Legally, the injunction against the strike affirmed the broad power of the federal government to ensure the free flow of interstate commerce, essentially making national strikes illegal.

In October 1898, the Illinois Supreme Court ordered the Pullman Company to sell all non-industrial landholdings. Some holdings, such as the brickyard, sold quickly. The Illinois Central railroad had owned the right of way past the front of the factory; Lake Vista was filled, and new tracks and a road were installed. The company was granted a deferment on its deadline to sell most of the town, which mostly changed hands in 1907, with residents given the first option to buy.

When owner George Pullman died in 1897, Robert Todd Lincoln, Abraham's son, filled in as the acting president. His role transformed into a permanent one in 1901. He resigned in 1911, citing health concerns. Lincoln remained involved as the chairman of the board, a position he held until 1922.

The Pullman Company, no longer in the landlord business, returned to success under its second president, Robert Todd Lincoln. Union activity returned to Pullman, and just ten years after the explosive strike in 1904, the company locked out union workers, trouncing them without larger incident. In 1900, the company began using metal frames for its cars, and by 1908, the company had converted to all-steel construction. Over $5 million was invested in remodeling and enlarging the shops. As the company succeeded in the 20th century, the town it once supported floundered. As the housing stock uniformly aged and other neighborhoods grew around it, Pullman lost population and its community identity.

The 1894 Strike was not the last time the Pullman Company would be the epicenter of a contentious labor issue. In the early 20th century, the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters (BSCP) strove for recognition of their union, a victory whose impact went beyond Pullman Porters to the Negro society on the whole.

The operation of railroads across the country relied on different classes of workers: conductors and engineers in the "operating trades," construction and laborers, and service positions like porters, dining car waiters, and station ushers. The classes of railway workers were segmented along racial and ethnic lines. Workers in the railroad trades began forming "brotherhoods" in the 1860s and 1870s to respond to health and safety issues. Many of these brotherhoods codified these racial divisions, barring non-whites from membership. In general, Negroes were confined to the service positions.

Thus it was in the service positions that black trade unionism on the railroads began. The Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters was founded in 1925 in New York City, and for four decades, was led by A. Philip Randolph. From outside the Pullman Company, he was not susceptible to their reprisals, and his powerful public speaking and work editing the Harlem, New York monthly The Messenger helped prepare him for the task. Porters comprised 44 percent of the Pullman rail car operation workforce, and Pullman was the nation's largest employer of Negros. The porters, owing in part to their cosmopolitan experience, held positions of status and respect in the black community. The union faced tough opposition from a traditionally racist industry, an anti-union corporation, and initially from some in the black community. Many members of the Negro community feared economic reprisals since the Pullman Company offered jobs to Negroes and advertised in the black press.

In 1937, the Pullman Company signed a contract with the BSCP, leading to higher salaries, better job security, and increased protection of workers' rights through grievance procedures. It was the first major labor agreement between an Negro union and a corporation. The NAACP's Crisis credited the victory for broad influence, saying, "As important as is this lucrative contract as a labor victory to the Pullman porters, it is even more important to the Negro race as a whole, from the point of view of the Negro's uphill climb for respect, recognition and influence, and economic advance." The BSCP also functioned as a civil rights organization through the 1960s.

The Pullman Company factories consolidated and downsized through the 1940s, and the railroads discontinued sleeping car service in 1969. For short trips, cars and highway travel eclipsed passenger rail, and commercial aviation eclipsed passenger rail for long-distance travel. Although the company split apart and rail travel itself faded from prominence, the Pullman Company and the labor unrest it ignited remained prominent in the American memory of industrial and labor history. The causes of those developments and upheavals can still be seen in the architecture and landscape of Pullman's model town.

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D.

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The Town of Pullman Street Name Changes.

Pullman's avenues were initially named after inventors. Chicago annexed the Town of Pullman in 1907. In 1909, the street names should have been changed along with the rest of the city. However, many of the old names were still in use up until the 1930s.

1909 Chicago Street Renaming Document

1909 Chicago Street Renumbering Document

Corliss Avenue is named after the inventor of the "Corliss Engine," George Henry Corliss (1817-1888). The Corliss Steam Engine originally powered the Pullman Works and provided steam heat for the public buildings in the town.

Maryland Avenue is named for the state of Maryland. The state, in turn, is named after the wife of King Charles I, Henrietta Maria. Charles was king at the time of the founding of the province in 1634. Maryland was originally named Ericsson Avenue (spelling varied on different maps). Ericsson is named after John Ericsson (1803-1889), inventor and engineer. He would have captured Mr. Pullman's attention because he developed and built the first ironclad, the U.S.S. Monitor, which famously saw action in the American Civil War.

Doty Avenue honors Duane Doty, original Pullman town manager.

Bessemer Avenue is a street that no longer exists in North Pullman, named after Henry Bessemer (1813-1898), the inventor of a revolutionary method of making steel. His system is still in use today.

Langley Avenue was probably named for Esther Langley, a relative of real estate developer, entrepreneur, and manufacturer Sivert Tobias Gunderson. Langley was originally Fulton Avenue, named for Robert Fulton (1765-1815). Fulton was an American engineer and inventor who developed the first commercially viable steamboat.

Champlain Avenue honors Samuel De Champlain (1567-1635), a French explorer and navigator who founded the city of Quebec. Champlain was originally Stephenson Avenue, named for George Stephenson (1781-1848). Stephenson Avenue occupied pride of place in the center spine of the town because the man the avenue honors built the first public railway line. All railways today are descended from this first railway; he also developed the standard gauge of railways (4 feet 8 and a half inches) still in use today.

St. Lawrence Avenue is named after the St. Lawrence River, which connects the Great Lakes to the Atlantic Ocean. St. Lawrence is named, in turn, after the early Christian Martyr St. Lawrence (225-258 AD), deacon of Rome. He was killed in the persecution of Christians by Emporer Valerian by roasting him to death over an open grate. Before 1907, St. Lawrence was Watt Avenue. James Watt (1736-1819) invented, among many other things, the first modern and efficient steam engine.

Forrestville Avenue - Forrestville was a small town on the south side in the 1850s. It was located near Hyde Park. The street name honors this now-vanished town. Forrestville was originally named Morse, named for Samuel Morse (1791-1872), developer of the single-wire telegraph system and, famously, Morse code.

Cottage Grove Avenue has a long history. Charles Cleaver (1814-1893) developed a suburb south of Chicago on the Illinois Central line called Cleaverville in the 1850s. Cleaverville eventually became the Oakland neighborhood north and west of Hyde Park. Cleaver named the street after a grove of shady trees that surrounded a cottage in his development. The grove was a popular meeting spot for early settlers.

Barack Obama announces the groundbreaking ceremony for his presidential library in Chicago’s covenanted Jackson Park.

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In historical writing and analysis, PRESENTISM introduces present-day ideas and perspectives into depictions or interpretations of the past. Presentism is a form of cultural bias that creates a distorted understanding of the subject matter. Reading modern notions of morality into the past is committing the error of presentism. Historical accounts are written by people and can be slanted, so I try my hardest to present fact-based and well-researched articles.

Facts don't require one's approval or acceptance.

I present [PG-13] articles without regard to race, color, political party, or religious beliefs, including Atheism, national origin, citizenship status, gender, LGBTQ+ status, disability, military status, or educational level. What I present are facts — NOT Alternative Facts — about the subject. You won't find articles or readers' comments that spread rumors, lies, hateful statements, and people instigating arguments or fights.

FOR HISTORICAL CLARITY

When I write about the INDIGENOUS PEOPLE, I follow this historical terminology:

• The use of old commonly used terms, disrespectful today, i.e., REDMAN or REDMEN, SAVAGES, and HALF-BREED are explained in this article.

Writing about AFRICAN-AMERICAN history, I follow these race terms:

• "NEGRO" was the term used until the mid-1960s.
• "BLACK" started being used in the mid-1960s.
• "AFRICAN-AMERICAN" [Afro-American] began usage in the late 1980s.

— PLEASE PRACTICE HISTORICISM —

THE INTERPRETATION OF THE PAST IN ITS OWN CONTEXT.

 

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Five years ago, then-President Barack Obama chose Chicago’s Jackson Park as the future site of his presidential center, stirring the South Side with the promise of long-overdue transformation and the distinction of being the place where the story of the nation’s first Black president and first lady is told.

On Tuesday, September 28, 2021, the Obamas will return to Chicago and at last kick off construction during a ceremonial groundbreaking with Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot and Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker, the Obama Foundation announced. The celebration follows a protracted journey that began in 2016 and, thanks to a confluence of obstacles, at times left supporters to wonder if dirt would ever be turned.

But with a date for the ceremony formally inked in, the Obama Presidential Center will take an important step toward its debut on the South Side, where Barack Obama was first elected to public office and Michelle Obama grew up.

“Michelle and I could not be more excited to break ground on the Obama Presidential Center in the community that we love,” Barack Obama said in a video posted Friday. “With your help, we can make the center a catalyst for economic opportunity, a new world-class destination on the South Side, and a platform for young people to drive change. So let’s celebrate Chicago.”

Obama Foundation President Valerie Jarrett agreed, saying next week’s ceremony also represents a milestone for the South Side.

“I spent my entire childhood and adulthood seeing the South Side overlooked,” Valerie Jarrett told the Tribune this past Monday. “For generations now, the South Side of Chicago hasn’t seen the kind of investment and attention that I think it deserves. So, long overdue, and I couldn’t be more proud that it is President and Mrs. Obama who decided to make this major investment in the South Side of Chicago.”

In pitching the vision of his presidential center, Obama sought to build a “living, breathing” campus that pays homage to the movement that made his historic presidency possible, Jarrett said — including in Chicago, where he served as a community organizer before finding his political star.

“This is not your parents’ or your grandparents’ presidential library,” Valerie Jarrett said. “This is a library of pointing really towards the future, that stands on the shoulders of our past.”

When Obama announced that historic Jackson Park, sandwiched between Lake Michigan and Woodlawn, would be the destination of his future presidential center, its opening day was scheduled for this year. But it would only be last month that shovels even hit the ground at the site, following a failed but lengthy legal effort to halt construction.

The hurdles to groundbreaking stemmed from Obama’s decision to place his presidential center at a park listed on the National Register of Historic Places and first mapped out in 1871 by famed landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted, who also co-designed New York’s, Central Park. The Jackson Park location, as well as the need to close and expand major adjacent streets, prompted a yearslong federal review that concluded this February.

However, that would not be the last the city and the Obama Foundation would hear from those who oppose the Jackson Park location. Protect Our Parks, a park preservationist nonprofit that unsuccessfully sued the city in 2018 to block the project, filed a second legal challenge the same day pre-construction roadwork began in April, this time regarding the legality of the federal review.

That lawsuit recently led to an emergency bid to block construction that was rejected by the U.S. Supreme Court in August. Bulldozers soon descended on the site, though the plaintiffs maintain they still have legal options in their arsenal.

Amid the twists and turns that the decision to locate the campus at Jackson Park sparked, Jarrett, said the Obamas never doubted their choice.

“Hard things are hard,” said Jarrett, who has deep roots in Chicago and worked in the Obama White House. “The challenges presented were challenges that we were prepared to overcome, and we have. And so, no, I never heard a single time where President Obama wavered in his commitment to deliver this world-class center on this site and in this location.”

The $700 million presidential center is mostly dirt mounds now, but in four years there is to be a 235-foot-tall tower with a quote from Barack Obama’s speech marking the 50th anniversary of the Selma to Montgomery civil-rights marches carved on the exterior. There will be a forum building and a plaza with public artwork open to members of the community to gather, as well as an athletic and recreation center.

A new branch of the Chicago Public Library will include on its roof a garden resembling Michelle Obama’s fruit and vegetable garden at the White House. And a playground, walking paths, and a sledding hill will adorn the park area surrounding the buildings.

Meanwhile, Obama Presidential Center Museum Director Louise Bernard, who also helped design the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, said the team has been searching across the nation for the thousands of objects that will go into the artifact collection. But Bernard emphasized the artifacts are not a “time capsule” but a way to inspire future generations, including the young South Side visitors who might come to see themselves as a future president of the U.S.

“It’s not simply that the history is this thing that happened in the past to other people, or that the objects all live behind glass … but rather that the visitor feels themselves to be a social actor in the making of history,” Bernard said in a recent interview.

In newly revealed details, Bernard shared that the four floors of the museum will start with the first level portraying Obama’s childhood in Hawaii and Indonesia as well as his seminal years in Chicago with Michelle Obama and his first presidential campaign. The second floor will frame his administration’s tenure, beginning with its inheritance of an economic meltdown and wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

On the third floor will be a homage to the diversity of the different groups of people who worked at the Obama White House, and a full-scale replica of the Oval Office will be open for visitors to walk through. And finally, the last floor will symbolize Obama’s “passing of the baton” to the next generation of leaders in his farewell address in Chicago, Bernard said.

“It’s a story that’s connected, obviously, to Chicago,” Bernard said. “It’s really rooted in the South Side of Chicago broadly. … As much as the kind of central narrative arc is about the Obama presidency, it is also about all of the people who made his journey possible.”

By Alice Yin, Chicago Tribune, Sept 24, 2021

Edited by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D.

Racism at Chicago's 1893 World's Columbian Exposition.

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In historical writing and analysis, PRESENTISM introduces present-day ideas and perspectives into depictions or interpretations of the past. Presentism is a form of cultural bias that creates a distorted understanding of the subject matter. Reading modern notions of morality into the past is committing the error of presentism. Historical accounts are written by people and can be slanted, so I try my hardest to present fact-based and well-researched articles.

Facts don't require one's approval or acceptance.

I present [PG-13] articles without regard to race, color, political party, or religious beliefs, including Atheism, national origin, citizenship status, gender, LGBTQ+ status, disability, military status, or educational level. What I present are facts — NOT Alternative Facts — about the subject. You won't find articles or readers' comments that spread rumors, lies, hateful statements, and people instigating arguments or fights.

FOR HISTORICAL CLARITY

When I write about the INDIGENOUS PEOPLE, I follow this historical terminology:

• The use of old commonly used terms, disrespectful today, i.e., REDMAN or REDMEN, SAVAGES, and HALF-BREED are explained in this article.

Writing about AFRICAN-AMERICAN history, I follow these race terms:

• "NEGRO" was the term used until the mid-1960s.
• "BLACK" started being used in the mid-1960s.
• "AFRICAN-AMERICAN" [Afro-American] began usage in the late 1980s.

— PLEASE PRACTICE HISTORICISM —

THE INTERPRETATION OF THE PAST IN ITS OWN CONTEXT.

 

---

The World's Columbian Exposition held in Chicago in 1893 symbolized the ascendancy of the United States among the world powers. It reflected the self-confidence and optimism of America in an age in which its citizens believed to be the most advanced in history. Negroes, only one generation removed from slavery, viewed the Exposition enthusiastically as a showcase for Negro achievement. In practice, however, they found themselves excluded from prestigious positions on the Exposition Commission, almost completely barred from all but menial employment, and practically unrepresented in the exhibits. 

The "Official Catalogue (10¢, $3.00 today) of Exhibits on the Midway Plaisance of the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition" advertised the South Sea Islands Village performances. Performers line up before the show "the songs and dances of Samoa, Fiji, Romutah and Wallis Islands" at the South Sea Island Theatre. Admission was 25¢  ($8.00 today).

Because all its buildings had white exteriors, the fair was nicknamed "The White City," but Negro visitors dubbed it "the great American white elephant," or "the white American's World's Fair." Negroes sharply disagreed among themselves concerning the most effective methods of dealing with the discrimination they encountered, but they agreed in their disappointment and disillusionment.

The Exposition received official recognition from the United States government and was financed partly by Congressional appropriations. In 1890, President Benjamin Harrison (1889-1893) appointed a large national commission representing all the states and territories to supervise plans for the celebration. Negroes were hurt when they learned that the entire commission was "simon-pure (absolutely genuine) and lily-white (a person or organization that rejects any culture other than white Americans)'' and charged that a Negro commissioner was unthinkable to the President because the appointment "would savor too much of sentimentality, and be ... distasteful to the majority of the commissioners themselves." 

Leaders in the National Convention of Colored Men and the Negro Press Association urged the President to add a Negro to the Commission. The humiliation of being ignored by the White House was almost equaled by the embarrassment of begging for what Negroes regarded as their right to representation. In March 1891, Harrison assured one delegation of Negroes that he was sympathetic but that there were simply no vacancies on the Commission. However, he named Hale G. Parker, a St. Louis school principal, as an alternate commissioner shortly afterward. Negroes might not have protested if this token appointment had been made initially. Still, when the selection was announced, Harrison was criticized because Parker's duties were of a "nonactive character." 

Furthermore, the President was held at least partly responsible for the absence of Negroes from the Exposition's Board of Lady Managers,' headed by Mrs. Potter Palmer, a Chicago socialite originally from Kentucky. This board contained nine Chicagoans and two members and two alternates from each state and territory. The board members ignored requests by Negroes for representation and appointed a white woman from Kentucky "to represent the colored people." The Lady Managers pointed to dissension among various Chicago "factions of Negroes," each one clamoring for recognition to justify this action. The Negro factions were indeed feuding with each other, and the Lady Managers circulated the document widely with the following patronizing passage:

The Board of Lady Managers would most earnestly urge the leaders of the various factions to sacrifice all ambition for personal advancement and work together for the good of the whole, thus seizing this great opportunity to show the world what marvelous growth and advancement have been made by the colored race and what a magnificent future is before them.

Negroes realized that they had received an intended slight from the aristocratic Mrs. Palmer.

As late as the end of 1891, the colored women of Chicago were still fighting with each other. The appointment of a Negro, Mrs. Fannie Barrier Williams, prominent club woman, civic worker, and wife of the lawyer S. Laing Williams, to the Fair's Bureau of Publicity, was allegedly dropped because several other Negroes considered her objectionable. The Freeman considered the feuding in Chicago as all too typical of race behavior in many cities: "It is a hellish, disgraceful and lamentable characteristic of the Negro race, to be the first to pull down their own ... because of jealousy and envy. ... Talk about race pride, there is no such thing." 

On December 30, 1892, Exposition officials announced the appointment of a Negro, Mrs. A. M. Curtis, wife of a prominent physician, as Secretary of Colored Interests. Mrs. Curtis was supposed to see that exhibits by Negroes received fair play, but a Chicago daily newspaper pointed out that although her desk was in Mrs. Palmer's office, she had no real power. 

Chicago Tribune, Saturday, December 31, 1892.

The transparent gesture placated no one, and the Cleveland Gazette charged that she was only "a sort of general utility clerk" whose real task was "to get Negroes in line." Within a few months, she resigned, her brief stay only emphasizing that Negroes were excluded from prestigious, policy-making positions.

Frederick Douglass and the noted anti-lynching crusader, Ida B. Wells, decided that visitors to the Fair should know that Negroes were "studiously kept out of representation in any official capacity and given menial places." Through the Negro press, they asked the Negro public to contribute five thousand dollars toward printing the booklet, "The Reason Why The Colored American Is Not In The World's Columbian Exposition" (pdf). Since the document was intended primarily for foreign visitors, the authors proposed to distribute the booklet, without charge, in English, French, German, and Spanish editions. 

This suggestion was condemned scathingly by many Negro editors. The Methodist Union denied the existence of discrimination. It held that no other ethnic minorities in the United States would print such a booklet, which was "calculated to make Negroes the butt of ridicule in the eyes... of the world. We are," the Methodist Union insisted, "going to Chicago as American citizens," not "as an odd race." The accommodating Indianapolis Freeman argued that although Negroes suffered from racial discrimination, they demeaned themselves by publicly admitting it to foreign visitors. The editor cautioned that foreigners could not ameliorate (make something bad better) the conditions under which Negroes were forced to live. Those complaints about mistreatment would increase white hostility in the United States. The Douglass-Wells booklet was also condemned because Negroes should conserve wealth instead of wasting it. One journal held that $5,000 could be spent more wisely by establishing a national orphan asylum. Another objected to a public solicitation because the collection of nickels and dimes from washerwomen furnished ammunition to believers in the "infantile mental and financial capacity of Negroes."

The Cleveland Gazette, Afro-American Advocate, Coffeyville, Kansas (1891-1893); Philadelphia Tribune; Richmond Planet; and Topeka Call were among the newspapers supporting Douglass and Miss Wells. They held that every Negro should lend financial support to the venture because the entire race would benefit from the broadest possible distribution of the booklet. The Topeka Call especially condemned the jealousy of those editors who were "pouring hot shot" on Douglass. In mid-1893, four months after the Douglass-Wells appeal to the Negro press for funds, the contributions received were described by Miss Wells as "very few and far between." Since only a few hundred dollars had been collected, the authors limited themselves to an edition in English.

Not only was there a lack of Negro representation on the honorary committees, but there was also discrimination in employment. Aside from porters, the Negro staff included only an Army chaplain detailed from the War Department, a nurse, two messengers, and three or four clerks. One of these "under clerks" worked in the Bureau of Publicity as the representative of the Negro press. The Chicago Conservator and the Indianapolis Freeman complained that the post should have been given to an editor of a Negro weekly, but "the assignment of any colored man of national reputation to any work in the World's Fair management is apparently against the policy of the powers that be."

It is doubtful whether Negro visitors experienced discrimination at the restaurants and amusements on the Exposition grounds. In a survey of several Negro newspapers, the writers found only one instance of racial exclusion at the Fair. In August 1893, the Indianapolis Freeman reported that a Negro woman from Lexington was refused entertainment in the Kentucky Building at the Fair. Perhaps the buildings of other Southern states also discriminated against Negro visitors, but in the Negro press, there were no references to such treatment. However, there were accounts of Negroes having dined in the California building and the Bureau of Public Comfort. If racial discrimination had been pervasive, almost certainly, that fact would have been mentioned by Negroes visiting Chicago for meetings of the Colored Men's Protective Association and other organizations. The Chicago press reported complaints by Negroes against the Exposition management, but discrimination in public accommodations was not among the grievances.

The Chicago Times newspaper (1854 until 1895  when it merged with the Chicago Herald), publisher of the picture book "Portfolio of the Midway Types," said of the Dahomey Village: “Its inhabitants were just the sort of people the managers of the Exposition did not attend banquet or surfeit (an excessive amount) with receptions.”

An important issue on which Negroes divided sharply related to the nature and character of the participation by Negroes in the exhibits. Basically, Negroes wanted representation without discrimination, but when discrimination became apparent many urged that a separate area for exhibits by Negroes would be desirable. The New York Age noted that few Negroes would have pressed for a Negro Annex if they had not been ignored so consistently by the Exposition officials. Many Negroes opposed any type of segregation, and late in 1890, a Chicago mass meeting adopted a resolution presented by Ferdinand L. Barnett, a prominent lawyer and one of the founders of the Conservator, urging those Exposition officials to make a special effort to encourage exhibits by Negroes and to display them in appropriate departments throughout the Fair. On the other hand, desiring to ensure participation by Negroes and to allow them to demonstrate advancement, J.C. Price, the president of Livingstone College and of the Afro-American League and, at the time, one of the half-dozen leading Negroes in the country, suggested that the Exposition should feature a Negro Annex or Negro department. Another Negro criticized any Negro who was "willing to dump his handiwork into a promiscuous heap with all nations and still expect identical credit. ... If we possess genius, our white brother assumes that the fact has not been established to his satisfaction . ... Under this condition can we afford to forego any and all legitimate means to make a place for ourselves?" 

Pressed by both sides, the board of managers listened to neither. In the spring of 1891, it ruled against racially separate exhibits. Still, instead of making a special effort to encourage Negroes to exhibit throughout the Fair, they told them to submit their displays to screening committees established in the various states. Since the great majority of Negroes lived in the South, it was evident that they could expect little attention to their interests at best. Yet Negroes attempted to follo\v the advice of Fair officials. Several newspapers urged the formation of local industrial associations to awaken interest in producing exhibits; readers were advised to forget past insults and prove to the world that they were not a passive, dependent, and uncreative people. However, few such organizations were set up, although the Negro World Columbian Association asked to be notified of "all handiwork or creditable evidence" that could be displayed suitably in Chicago. The Columbian Association and other groups petitioned Congress for a collection and compilation of statistics demonstrating the progress of Negroes since Emancipation to be displayed as part of the United States government exhibit at the Fair. Still, the legislators in Washington refused to pass the bill.

The Dahomey Village at the California Midwinter Fair, 1894.

Hale Parker, the Negro appointed alternate Commissioner, initially endorsed the managers' decision on the exhibits and regarded a Negro Annex as "offensive and defensive" and held that "We wish ... to be measured by the universal yardstick and if we fall short the world knows why. But for one, I do not fear the test, and those who have ... made a careful observation of the material progress of the colored people have no reason to fear an eclipse in the glory and grandeur of the fair." Later, however, candidly admitting his inability to influence Exposition officials, he conceded that exhibits by Negroes "in many instances, would have to be submitted to the judgment of their enemies in States of the Union not likely to court or encourage the "social equality" of exhibits and the commercial brotherhood of their producers." Nevertheless, fearing that discrimination by the Exposition managers would cause some potential Negro exhibitors to boycott the Exposition as an "unclean thing," Parker condemned false racial pride. "Nothing short of prohibition from the fairgrounds could operate as a valid reason for not exhibiting," he insisted.

The Fair opened on May 1, 1893. Negro visitors expressed disappointment at the scarcity of exhibits by Negroes. One of them wrote: "There is a lump which comes up in my throat as I pass around through all this ... and see but little to represent us here." However, they took pride in the Haitian and Liberian pavilions. They noticed that several Negroes from New York and Philadelphia displayed needlework and drawings in the Women's Building. Booths represented Wilberforce University, Tennessee Central College (now defunct), Atlanta University, and Hampton Institute in other parts of the Exposition. 

Less edifying was a sideshow on the Midway, consisting of a Dahomey Village. Negro leaders did not approve of the Midway activities involving Africans from Dahomey, and the Dahomians objected to questions about their past cannibalism.

Dahomey Village consisted of three houses, one fitted up for a museum, a group of huts for the women, and others for the men. In addition, there were four open sheds used for cooking. The rustic front of the exhibit was constructed of wood brought from Dahomey, and on platforms on each side of the gates were seated two sentinel warriors of that country attired in their native costume. There were forty women and sixty men in the village. The various dances and other ceremonials peculiar to these people were exhibited, and their songs, chants, and war cry were given. They also sold unique products of their mechanical skill, such as quaint hand-carved objects, domestic and warlike utensils, etc. During the later months of the Fair, it was found necessary by the fair's management to place a strange placard just outside the entrance. It was a request to all visitors that they refrain from questioning the natives of the village regarding the past cannibal habits of themselves and their ancestors, as it was very annoying to them.

Frederick Douglass contemptuously commented that the Exposition managers evidently wanted Negro Americans to be represented by the "barbaric rites" of "African savages brought here to act the monkey." 

Racism seems to have been planned in advance by the fair's board of directors.

On the Midway Plaisance, a mile long and 600 feet wide strip of land, visitors encountered a lesson in “race science” and social Darwinism. Here they saw “living exhibits”— representatives of the world’s “races,” including Africans, Asians, and American Indians. The two German and two Irish villages were located nearest to the White City. The farther west you went were villages representing the Middle East, West Asia, and East Asia. So, the closer one got to the Midway exit gate at the west end of the Midway, visitors were descend to the savage races, the African of Dahomey (with a history of cannibalism) and the North American Indians, each of which has its place at the far end of the Plaisance. Fear was so prevalent that the fair management posted a placard just outside the entrance to the Dahomey village. It was a request to all visitors that they refrain from questioning the natives of the village regarding their past cannibal habits of themselves and their ancestors, as it was very annoying to them.

Undoubtedly, the best way of looking at these races was to behold them in the ascending scale, starting at the west entrance gate, moving eastward toward the 'White City" main fair, starting with the lowest specimens of humanity, reaching continually upward to the highest stage with the thought of evolution, until you arrived at the fair proper.

The fair’s organizers promoted the idea that the “savage races” were dangerous by warning that the Dahomey women are as fierce if not fiercer than the men, and all of them have to be watched day and night for fear they may use their spears for other purposes than a barbaric embellishment of their dances. The stern warning reinforced many Americans’ fears that negroes could not be trusted and were naturally predisposed to immoral and criminal behavior and thus kept away from white people through segregation.

If the proposal for a Negro Annex aroused controversy among negroes, a veritable furor arose when the Exposition managers announced a Colored Jubilee Day on August 25, 1893. To many Negroes, already infuriated by discrimination at the Exposition, the idea of a "Negro Day" was intolerable. On this issue, even Frederick Douglass and Ida Wells were in disagreement.

The celebration was originally suggested by several Negroes on the East Coast who proposed that a day be set aside for folk music, speeches, and general thanksgiving. Exposition officials agreed, having already scheduled similar celebrations for Swedish, German, Irish, and other nationalities. Douglass lauded this opportunity to display Negro culture and "the real position" of Negroes. However, Miss Wells declared that the celebration was a mockery intended to patronize them. She accused Exposition officials of seeking to entice lower-class Negroes by providing two thousand watermelons. The degrading vision she presented was quite different from Douglass' portrait: 

The sell-respect of the race is sold for a mess of pottage and the spectacle of the class of our people who will come on that excursion roaming around the grounds munching watermelon will do more to lower the race in the estimation of the world than anything else. The sight of the horde that would be attracted there by the dazzling prospect of plenty of free watermelons to eat, will give our enemies all the illustration they wish as an excuse for not treating the negroes with the equality of other citizens. 

Miss Wells received plenty of newspaper support. The Cleveland Gazette advised self-respecting Negroes to ignore the Exposition since the only privilege they received was to spend money there. The Topeka Call approvingly published a memorial written by a group of Negroes in Chicago, who insisted that since "there is to be no 'white American citizen's day,' why should there be a 'colored American citizen's day'?" 

As the celebration approached, prominent Negroes such as the former Congressman J . Mercer Langston and the famous singer Sisserietta Jones (the "Black Patti") refused to participate. The Colored Men's Protective Association, which held its national meetings in Chicago, would not endorse the program. A group of Chicago ministers planned suburban excursions to discourage attendance by Negroes. 

Douglass, who insisted that Negro Day (aka Colored People's Day) was a small but valuable concession extracted from racist Fair officials, was annoyed by the "petulance" of the editors and in a lecture to them, claimed that "all we have ever received has come to us in small concessions and it is not the part of wisdom to despise the day of small things." The Negro promoters of the celebration tried to ensure a large audience by working through Negro fraternal organizations. Obviously, the sponsors were on the defensive because they assured Negroes that Colored People's Day would not be an occasion of discredit or ridicule and pleaded with them to come and show whites how "refined, dignified, and cultured" Negroes really were.

Contemporary accounts in the Negro press differ on the degree to which the celebration was a success. The Indianapolis Freeman reported that less than a thousand Negroes showed up, while the Topeka Call estimated several thousand entered the Exposition grounds. Besides Douglass, notables on the platform included Bishops Henry M. Turner of the African Methodist Episcopal Church and Alexander Walters of the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church. The rising young poet, Paul Laurence Dunbar, recited his poem, "The Colored American." Musical selections were presented by the concert singers Harry T. Burleigh and Madame Delseria Plato. Even the Freeman, which recorded the occasion as a "dismal failure," agreed that the musical portion of the program was "a glittering success."

Douglass, giving the main address of the day, used the occasion not to praise the Fair but to vindicate the progress made by Negro Americans despite conditions of persecution and injustice and to denounce the policies of the fair managers. He denied "with scorn and indignation the allegation ... that our small participation in this World's Columbian Exposition is due either to our ignorance or to our want of public spirit." That Negroes were "outside of the World's Fair is only consistent with the fact that we are excluded from every respectable calling." He excoriated Northern whites for catering to their former enemies in the white South were cheating, whipping, and killing Negroes were everyday occurrences while at the same time discriminating against Negroes, who were their friends. "In your fawning upon these cruel slayers, you slap us in the face. With the same shallow prejudice which keeps us in the lowering rank in your estimation, this exposition denied mere recognition to eight million and one-tenth of its own people. Kentucky and the rest object, and thus you see not a colored face in a single worthy place on these grounds. ... Why in Heaven's name," he exclaimed, "do you take to your breast the serpent that once stung, and crush down the race that grasped the saber and helped make the nation one and therefore the exposition possible?" 

Ida Wells was so impressed when she read the reports of this speech in the newspapers that she immediately apologized to the distinguished elder statesman. Douglass' speech had articulated brilliantly Negro alienation and disillusionment with the actions of Northern whites in general and with the fair in particular. In fact, he made it crystal clear that for Negroes the fair symbolized not the material progress of America but a moral regression — the reconciliation of the North and South at the expense of Negroes.  

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D.