The Exhibit of American Negroes
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The Exhibit of American Negroes was a sociological display within the Palace of Social Economy at the 1900 World's Fair in
Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), ma ...
. The exhibit was a joint effort between Daniel Murray, the Assistant Librarian of Congress, Thomas J. Calloway, a lawyer and the primary organizer of the exhibit, and W. E. B. Du Bois. The goal of the exhibition was to demonstrate progress and commemorate the lives of
African American African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans and Afro-Americans) are an ethnic group consisting of Americans with partial or total ancestry from sub-Saharan Africa. The term "African American" generally denotes descendants of ens ...
s at the turn of the century.
David Levering Lewis David Levering Lewis (born May 25, 1936) is an American historian, a Julius Silver University Professor, and a professor of history at New York University. He is twice winner of the Pulitzer Prize Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography, for ...
, "A Small Nation of People: W.E.B. Du Bois and Black Americans at the Turn of the Twentieth Century", ''A Small Nation of People: W. E. B. Du Bois and African American Portraits of Progress''. New York: Amistad, 2003. 24–49.
The exhibit included a statuette of
Frederick Douglass Frederick Douglass (born Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey, February 1817 or 1818 – February 20, 1895) was an American social reformer, abolitionist, orator, writer, and statesman. After escaping from slavery in Maryland, he became ...
, four bound volumes of nearly 400 official
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s by African Americans, photographs from several educational institutions ( Fisk University,
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,
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,
Tuskegee Institute Tuskegee University (Tuskegee or TU), formerly known as the Tuskegee Institute, is a private, historically black land-grant university in Tuskegee, Alabama. It was founded on Independence Day in 1881 by the state legislature. The campus was de ...
,
Claflin University Claflin University is a private historically black university in Orangeburg, South Carolina. Founded in 1869 after the American Civil War by northern missionaries for the education of freedmen and their children, it offers bachelor's and master' ...
,
Berea College Berea College is a private liberal arts work college in Berea, Kentucky. Founded in 1855, Berea College was the first college in the Southern United States to be coeducational and racially integrated. Berea College charges no tuition; every a ...
, North Carolina A&T), an African-American bibliography by the
Library of Congress The Library of Congress (LOC) is the research library that officially serves the United States Congress and is the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It is the oldest federal cultural institution in the country. The library ...
containing 1,400 titles, and two social studies directed by W. E. B. Du Bois: "The Georgia Negro" (comprising 32 handmade graphs and charts), and a set of about 30 statistical graphics on the African-American population made by Du Bois's students at Atlanta University. Most memorably, the exhibit displayed some five hundred photographs of African-American men and women, homes, churches, businesses and landscapes including photographs from Thomas E. Askew.


Founding

Thomas Junius Calloway, an African-American lawyer and educator, sent a letter to over one hundred African-American representatives in various sections of the
United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...
, including Booker T. Washington, to solicit help in advocating for an exhibit to present at the world's fair in Paris. The letter insists that, "thousands upon thousands will go o the fair and a well selected and prepared exhibit, representing the Negro's development in his churches, his schools, his homes, his farms, his stores, his professions and pursuits in general will attract attention... and do a great and lasting good in convincing thinking people of the possibilities of the Negro." Washington appealed personally to President
William McKinley William McKinley (January 29, 1843September 14, 1901) was the 25th president of the United States, serving from 1897 until his assassination in 1901. As a politician he led a realignment that made his Republican Party largely dominant in ...
and just four months before the opening of the Paris Exposition,
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allocated $15,000 to fund the exhibit. Calloway enlisted Du Bois, with whom he had formerly been classmates at Fisk, and Daniel Murray, Assistant to the Librarian of Congress, to assemble materials. Du Bois included photographs that he called "typical
Negro In the English language, ''negro'' is a term historically used to denote persons considered to be of Black African heritage. The word ''negro'' means the color black in both Spanish and in Portuguese, where English took it from. The term can be ...
faces," exemplifying the accomplishment and progress of African Americans. He compiled a set of three large albums of photographs, the photographer of which was never identified at the exhibit. Some were formal studio portraits, but there were also informal
snapshot Snapshot, snapshots or snap shot may refer to: * Snapshot (photography), a photograph taken without preparation Computing * Snapshot (computer storage), the state of a system at a particular point in time * Snapshot (file format) or SNP, a file ...
s of groups of people, children playing in the streets, people working, family outings, images of houses and businesses and the interiors of homes. The exhibit was separate from United States national building, within the shared space of the Palace of Social Economy and Congresses with maps detailing U.S. resources,
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models, and information on labor unions, railroad pensions and libraries. It was displayed from April to November 1900 and over 50 million people passed through.David Levering Lewis, "A Small Nation of People: W.E.B. Du Bois and Black Americans at the Turn of the Twentieth Century", ''A Small Nation of People'' (2003), 14–23. Mainstream American newspapers generally ignored the existence of the Negro Exhibit, and the U.S. commissioner-general failed to mention the Negro Exhibit in his comprehensive article published in the ''
North American Review The ''North American Review'' (NAR) was the first literary magazine in the United States. It was founded in Boston in 1815 by journalist Nathan Hale and others. It was published continuously until 1940, after which it was inactive until revived at ...
''. Still, the Negro Exhibit occupied one fourth of the total exhibition space allocated to the US in the multinational Palace of Social Economy and Congresses, and Black periodicals like '' The Colored American'' wrote extensively about the project. ;Current location Today the Exhibit of American Negroes is housed at the
Library of Congress The Library of Congress (LOC) is the research library that officially serves the United States Congress and is the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It is the oldest federal cultural institution in the country. The library ...
.


See also

* Lincoln Jubilee


References


External links


CAAS 588 Paris Exposition

African American Photographs Assembled for 1900 Paris Exposition
Library of Congress



Digital Archive of Architecture, Boston College
Du Bois in Paris – Exposition Universelle, 1900
Library of Congress blog
''W. E. B. Du Bois's Data Portraits: Visualizing Black America''
edited by Whitney Battle-Baptiste and Britt Rusert, Princeton Architectural Press, 2018, . {{DEFAULTSORT:Exhibit of American Negroes Exposition Universelle (1900) 1900 in France African-American history between emancipation and the civil rights movement African-American festivals 1900 festivals