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The 1900 Paris Exposition
I have included links to several sites with material from the "Exhibit of American Negroes," which W.E.B. Du Bois helped to organize for the l'Exposition Universelle de 1900.
On this web page you will find sections with links to:
* Primary Sources, including texts and image files that are Internet-accessible;
* Contemporary Secondary Sources from DuBois's time that discuss the exhibit;
* Later Secondary Sources that examine the 1900 exhibit in Paris and its significance;
* Related Sources that pertain to the 1900 Paris Exposition and its intellectual context; and
* the 1901 Pan American Exposition (Buffalo, NY), which included the Exhibit of American Negroes originally displayed in Paris.
Robert W. Williams, Ph.D. [Bio]LATEST LINK (As of 1 June 2010)
Contemporary Secondary Source
Posted below is an excerpt on the "Negro Exhibit" by Morris Lewis as printed in The Colored American Magazine (October 1900).
PRIMARY SOURCES: TEXTS, GRAPHICS & RELATED ITEMS
"The American Negro at Paris." 1900. Du Bois' article on the 1900 Paris Exposition (l'Exposition Universelle de 1900). (Citation: The American Monthly Review of Reviews, vol. XXII, no. 5 (November 1900): The essay on this web site with some commentary and external linkshttp://www.webdubois.org/dbANParis.html
Google Books has the entire periodical available online
http://books.google.com/books?id=hTIIg_nfB3YC.... [Essay's start page]
Source Condensing "The American Negro at Paris" In Public Opinion (11-15-1900), we find a condensed version of DuBois's essay. The piece is entitled "The Sociological Exhibit of American Negroes"; the by-line (or subtitle?) reads "W. E. B. Du Bois, in the November American Monthly Review of Reviews, New York. Condensed for Public Opinion". [Citation: Public Opinion: A Comprehensive Summary of the Press, v.29, n.20 (15 November 1900): 620-621].
Start page of the essay at Google Books:
http://books.google.com/books?id=w9oaAAAAYAAJ. . . .PA620,M1
[About-this-book page]
Secondary Source: An anonymously written notice of Du Bois' article on "The American Negro at Paris" was published in the section "Reviews and Notices" of the Publications of the Southern History Association (Vol. V, No. 1 (January 1901): 83-84).
In the Review of Reviews for November, Dr. W. E. B. DuBois has an article on the exhibition of the American negro at Paris. "This is the exhibit of American negroes, planned and executed by negroes, and collected and installed under the direction of a negro special agent, Mr. Thomas J. Calloway." It undertakes to show (a) The history of the American negro ; (b) His present condition ; (c) His education ; (d) His literature. There are charts, photographs, models of progress, pictures and maps illustrating his condition present and past. One set of charts undertakes to show his condition in the United States as a whole ; another shows conditions in the typical State of Georgia. There are exhibits of various institutions of learning for that race ; a record of 350 patents granted black men since 1834, while his literature makes a bibliography of 1,400 titles, of which 200 are on exhibition. A list of awards granted the exhibit is added. [R. Williams' Note: "Negro" is not capitalized in the original. Also, the periodical title is not marked by italics or underlining.]
Page 83 in the full text of the periodical (at Google Books):
http://books.google.com/books?id=iSsMAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA83&as_brr=1
[Alternate digital version at Google Books]
Exhibit of American Negroes - World's Fair, Paris 1900.
This is a reconstruction of DuBois' famous exhibit. It was prepared from archival sources by Eugene F. Provenzo, Jr. (faculty page at the School of Education, University of Miami).http://129.171.53.1/ep/Paris/home.htm
Mirror site at Facts On Filehttp://www.fofweb.com/Onfiles/Afhc/afparis1900/1paris1900index.htm
[Also accessible at: http://www.fofweb.com/Onfiles/Afhc/afparis1900/info__about_paris1900.htm]
Paris Exposition of 1900: Photographs at the U.S. Library of Congress. About the photo collection: "Prints & Photographs Online Catalog - African American Photographs Assembled for the Paris Exposition of 1900 - About"http://lcweb2.loc.gov/pp/anedubhtml/anedubabt.html
Search for specific 1900 Paris Exposition photographs at the LOChttp://lcweb2.loc.gov/pp/anedubquery.html
"Paris Exposition Universelle Collection". About 60 photographs from the U.S. Library of Congress' collection on the 1900 Exposition are presented in a series of web pages.
At PBS's "The History of Jim Crow" sitehttp://www.jimcrowhistory.org/scripts/jimcrow/gallery.cgi?collection=paris
Reading Guide to "W.E.B. Du Bois, African American photographs assembled for the 1900 Paris Exposition" presented by the National Humanities Center as part of its "Toolbox Library: Primary Resources in U.S. History and Literature," specifically the Toolbox Library entitled: "The Making of African American Identity 1865-1917" [start page].
"Public Image" [Contrasts 1900 Paris Exposition photographs with stereotypes of the "Negro banjo player" (the NHC links to such images)]http://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/pds/maai2/identity/text4/text4read.htm
"The Negro Exhibit" by Thomas J. Calloway (1901). Calloway published this report in which he described the exhibit on and by African Americans that was presented at the International Universal Exposition in Paris. He also outlined Du Bois's contributions to the exhibit. [Citation: Pp.463-467 in Report of the Commissioner-General for the United States to the International Universal Exposition, Paris, 1900. Volume II. U.S. Senate Document No. 232 (56th Congress, 2d Session). Washington, D.C.: G.P.O., 1901].
CONTEMPORARY SECONDARY SOURCES ON THE EXPOSITION
An anonymously written notice, "Negro Authorship," was published in the Publications of the Southern History Association (1900). As presented in the "Notes and Queries" section, the brief piece is transcribed below verbatim and in its entirety: Negro Authorship.—Under the direction of the librarian of Congress, Mr. Daniel Murray, himself a Negro, and member of the Library Staff, has made a large collection of books and pamphlets by Negro authors for exhibition at Paris, and afterwards for permanent deposit in the Library of Congress. In connection with this Mr. Murray hopes to make a complete Negro bibliography. His efforts will give the most authentic evidence of the literary output of the race. It will doubtless be a matter of great astonishment that the preliminary list of titles covers six printed pages, or nearly three hundred in all, the most of the works having been published in this country, with a few in London. [Robert Williams' Note 1 (Citation): Anonymous. 1900. "Negro Authorship." [Notes and Queries]. Publications of the Southern History Association, 4:4 (July): 295-296.
R.W.'s Note 2: The anonymous author is probably referencing Daniel Murray's bibliographic compilation entitled Preliminary List of Books and Pamphlets by Negro Authors for Paris Exposition and Library of Congress (Washington, D.C., U.S. Commission to the Paris Exposition, 1900). The Library of Congress has viewable page images online: start page.]
The notice is accessible at Google Books [start page]http://books.google.com/books?id=vdQRAAAAYAAJ...pg=PA295....
"The Negro in Literature," 1900, was anonymously written and published in the "Letters and Art" section of the Literary Digest. Full citation: Anonymous. "The Negro in Literature." Literary Digest, v.21, n.5 (August 4, 1900): 130. The text of the piece is rendered verbatim and in its entirety.
The Negro in Literature.—One of the most unique exhibits in the American section of the Paris Exhibition will be a complete bibliography of the pamphlets and books written by negro authors. This work has been carried on with great thoroughness for the past two years by Mr. Daniel Murray, of the Congressional Library, under the direction of the librarian of Congress, Mr. Herbert Putnam. The following account of this work is given in the Chicago Times-Herald:
"In Mr. Murray's preliminary list of books and pamphlets by
negro authors there are 1,100 titles and about 1,200 writers.
These beginnings have been found mostly in Philadelphia, Boston,
New York, Baltimore, and Washington. The pamphlet literature
is particularly interesting, as showing to what extent colored
men became thinkers and scholars in days when it was a
crime to teach negroes to read and write. These people without
a country and without favor not only became educated, but what
they wrote contributed greatly to the political, religious, and
social questions of the day. Many of these earlier writers were
educated in the West Indies. Much of their writing exhibited
excellence of the highest order.
"The chief characteristic of nearly all of this early writing by negro authors was seriousness. There was but little fiction, poetry, or humor. How to destroy slavery and bring freedom and equality to the enslaved was the burden of most of the first negro authors. With the conquest of slavery negro authors lost their most inspiring theme. Since that time a very few men and women have gained name and fame as contributors to American literature.
"George W. Williams's 'History of the American Negro,' in two large volumes, is an interesting and valuable compilation. Bishop Payne's 'History of the A. M. E. Church.' Anna J. Cooper's essays, 'A Voice from the South,' Frederick Douglass's wonderful autobiography, the more recent publications by Booker T. Washington, Professor Du Boise [sic], and the lives of Phillips and Sumner, by Archibald Grimke. and the literary productions of Paul Laurence Dunbar and Charles Chestnut are representative of the best things contributed to American literature by negro authors. These later books are what might be called the first productions of the negro in freedom. It is the first literary utterance of the negro who has been to school. It is also prophetic of what may be expected. It is a promise that authorship of a most interesting and valuable kind will develop in the course of the progressive life of the race."
[R.W.W.'s Note: "Negro" is not capitalized in the original text. Du Bois's name is misspelled as "Du Boise".]
"The chief characteristic of nearly all of this early writing by negro authors was seriousness. There was but little fiction, poetry, or humor. How to destroy slavery and bring freedom and equality to the enslaved was the burden of most of the first negro authors. With the conquest of slavery negro authors lost their most inspiring theme. Since that time a very few men and women have gained name and fame as contributors to American literature.
"George W. Williams's 'History of the American Negro,' in two large volumes, is an interesting and valuable compilation. Bishop Payne's 'History of the A. M. E. Church.' Anna J. Cooper's essays, 'A Voice from the South,' Frederick Douglass's wonderful autobiography, the more recent publications by Booker T. Washington, Professor Du Boise [sic], and the lives of Phillips and Sumner, by Archibald Grimke. and the literary productions of Paul Laurence Dunbar and Charles Chestnut are representative of the best things contributed to American literature by negro authors. These later books are what might be called the first productions of the negro in freedom. It is the first literary utterance of the negro who has been to school. It is also prophetic of what may be expected. It is a promise that authorship of a most interesting and valuable kind will develop in the course of the progressive life of the race."
Start page of the article within the entire issue (p.130) http://books.google.com/books?id=_03QAAAAMAAJ. . . #PPA130,M1
"Paris and the International Exposition" by Morris Lewis. Lewis, as stated in the article was Attaché to the U.S. Commission to the Paris Exposition; he published this piece in The Colored American Magazine, 1:5 (October 1900): pp.291-295.
He described the U.S. presence at the Exposition in general terms, but noted particular cases of African Americans there. He also highlighted the "Negro Exhibit" and included a brief mention of DuBois by name (p.295):The Negro Exhibit in the Palace of Social Economy on the banks of the Seine is one of particular interest, in that it shows to the world the progress made by a race of but thirty years' freedom. This exhibit is successfully installed in a corner of the United States section, and among other objects consists chiefly of photographs of the Negro educational institutions of the United States. Booker T. Washington's school at Tuskegee, Ala., has on exhibition a very fine collection of work turned out at the school, consisting of wood-turning, joining, painting, graining, forging, harness-making, etc. A large portrait of Booker T. Washington hangs above the exhibit. Large pictures of the late Hon. B. K. Bruce, and Hon. Judson W. Lyons, the present Register of the Treasury, are here exhibited, together with two five-thousand-dollar government bonds, bearing the respective signatures of these distinguished colored gentlemen. Many books are here by colored authors. A series of charts giving statistics with reference to the status of the Negro in the United States, and especially in the state of Georgia, are neatly arranged in wing frames. These were prepared at Atlanta University, Atlanta, Ga., under the direction of Prof. W. E. B. DuBois. A bronze statuette of the Hon. Frederick Douglass is on exhibition, this being a facsimile of the statue to Doug- lass in Rochester, N. Y. This collective exhibit has received a "grand prize."
In the Palace of Beaux Arts is to be found H. O. Tanner's painting, "Daniel in the Lion's Den," while in the United States National Pavilion Mr. Tanner has two pictures, "The Lion Hunt" and "Hills near Jerusalem." Mr. Tanner receives a silver medal as an award from the Exposition. [p.295] [R.W.W.'s Note: "Negro" is indeed capitalized in the original text.]
Start page of the article available at Hathi Trust Digital Library (p.291)http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.b3793660....
"The Negro Exhibit" section within N.P. Gilman's article "Social Economics at the Paris Exposition" (Bulletin of the Department of Labor, No. 34 (May 1901): 440-489). Gilman described various exhibits from the U.S.A. and other countries at the Exhibition as they related to "social economics", a field encompassing industry, unions, working conditions, and industrial education, among other things. Gilman wrote:
THE NEGRO EXHIBIT.
An unusual exhibit in the United States section was the varied collection
showing the progress of the Negro race in the United States.
This exhibit embraced many specimens of work done in manual-training
and trade schools, besides the usual educational exhibits; a collection
of books by Negro authors and of newspapers and periodicals published
by Negroes; photographs of the Hampton Institute, the Tuskegee
School, and other colleges and training schools for the Negro; a collection
of charts illustrating the condition of the American Negro, prepared
by students of Atlanta University; a number of volumes, too
formidable in size for consultation, compiled by Prof. W. E. Burghardt
Du Bois, entitled The Georgia Negro, a Social Study; Types of
American Negroes; The Black Code of Georgia; Negro Landholders of
Georgia, and Negro Life in Georgia. One set of photographs showed
the possibilities of the race, and was concerned with the Coleman Manufacturing
Company's cotton mill, a plant owned, managed, and operated
entirely by Negroes. Some of the more important statistics presented
in the exhibit are here shown. [. . . .] [R.W.W.'s Note 1: The section continued by presenting various economic and demographic data on African Americans in general and African Americans in Georgia in particular.
Note 2: It is interesting to observe that "Negro" is capitalized in the original text, a convention that was not necessarily followed by all publications of the era. Also, the several words descriptive of the contents of the "Negro Exhibit" are not identified by italics or quotation marks.]
Start page of the section on "The Negro Exhibit" (pp. 471-473) http://books.google.com/books?id=pZwCAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA471&as_brr=1
[Start page for N.P. Gilman's entire article]
[Primary Source Note: These cited pages are part of the Bulletin of the Department of Labor's Volume VI, which is accessible in its entirety: TOC. Note also that Du Bois's "The Negro Landholder of Georgia" (Bulletin of the Department of Labor, No. 35 (July 1901): 647-777) is available, although with several pages missing, and a few pages out of sequence. Also accessible in that volume are William Taylor Thom's "The Negroes of Sandy Spring, Md." (Bulletin No. 32 (January 1901): 43-102);
LATER SECONDARY SOURCES ON THE 1900 PARIS EXPOSITION
"The Paris Exposition of 1900 and W.E.B. Du Bois" by Ronald L. F. Davis. (No date is given, but the PBS show was originally aired in 2002). Davis writes:
The exhibit clearly had a political intention in that it did not dwell directly upon any of the injustices suffered by American blacks at the hands of a racist, white society. Indeed, no images documenting such oppression would have been allowed by the American authorities. Instead, the exhibit was a visual appeal for world to recognize that talented African Americans were ready and prepared to take their place among the most civilized people of the coming modern age. Less than a summation of the past, Du Bois' exhibit portrayed a vision of the future.
At PBS's "The History of Jim Crow" site (Overview page)
http://www.jimcrowhistory.org/resources/lessonplans/hs_es_paris_expo.htm
[As PDF file: 8K]
"Finding One's Place: Creating a New Eden for the 'New Negro': An Analysis of the American Negro Exhibit's Photography at the Paris Exposition of 1900" by Shannon Grevious. (No date given, but perhaps 2006 or 2005). Grevious writes in the Abstract:Since the turn of the 20th century, photography has emerged as a tool to document the human existence and has become a powerful lens of a perceived truth. However, as a machine, the camera alone does not create our reality; those behind the camera determine the visual content and context of photographs and influence how the audience perceives a photographic subject. W.E.B. Du Bois understood the power of photography and like his contemporaries, who used photography to document scientific evidence, adopted the photographic image to combat racist imagery and negative perceptions of African-Americans at the turn of the 20th century.
From Gnovis, Vol. 6 (Georgetown University's journal of Communication, Culture and Technology www.gnovisjournal.org/files/Shannon-Grevious-Finding-One-s-Place.pdf
Frances Benjamin Johnston Collection, Library of Congress. The LOC houses many of her photographs which span a long career. There are photographs of Hampton Institute, some of which may have been displayed as part the Exhibit of American Negroes.
Frances Benjamin Johnston Collection, Prints & Photographs Division, LOChttp://memory.loc.gov/ammem/awhhtml/awpnp6/johnston_coll.html
Collection Overview: Frances Benjamin Johnston (Prints & Photographs Reading Room, LOC)http://www.loc.gov/rr/print/coll/131.html
Talks by David Levering Lewis and Deborah Willis, co-authors of A Small Nation of People: W.E.B. Du Bois & African American Portraits of Progress (NY: Amistad, 2003), about the 1900 Paris Exhibition.
Streaming video, "Historians to discuss Images of Early African American Life," Center For The Book, Library of Congress, 29 October 2003. http://www.loc.gov/locvideo/lewis_willis/
"Pictures at an Exhibition - April in Paris: A startling image at the Exposition Universelle" by Jack Neely. 2003. Columnist Neely provides local -- specifically, Knoxville, Tennessee -- commmentary on one photograph at the 1900 Paris Exposition. He briefly discussed Charles C. Dodson (owner of the jewelry and watchmaker's shop, Dodson & Co.) within the overall context of At the "Metro Pulse Online: Knoxville's Weekly Voice" (February 20, 2003: Vol. 13, No. 8)http://www.metropulse.com/dir_zine/dir_2003/1308/t_secret.html
* Note: In my experience this web page has sometimes redirected to an unrelated page. Under those circumstances, I pressed the Escape key or clicked the browser's Stop button immediately after the page was displayed.
* The Dodson photograph can be viewed online at the Library of Congress. Go to the LOC's
"American Visions at the Paris Exposition, 1900: Another Look at Frances Benjamin Johnston's Hampton Photographs." Article by Jeannene M. Przyblyski (Art Journal, 57:3 (Fall 1998)).
NO LONGER AVAILABLE at www.FindArticles.com Unfortunately, I could not locate a free online version of this article.
"Their Own Progress and Prospect: African Americans and l'Exposition Universelle de 1900" by Wilfred D. Samuels (Heath Anthology of American Literature Newsletter, Spring 1999)
Article online via Houghton Mifflin Companyhttp://college.hmco.com/english/heath/newsletter/spring99/samuels.html
"'Looking at One's Self Through the Eyes of Others': W.E.B. Du Bois's Photographs for the 1900 Paris Exposition." Article by Shawn Michelle Smith [faculty page; web site] (African American Review, 34:4 (Winter 2000): 581-599).
Available free online at www.FindArticles.com (without photos)http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2838/is_4_34/ai_70434324/....
[Start page of the article]
David A. Gerstner reviews Shawn Michelle Smith's Photography on the Color Line: W.E.B. Du Bois, Race, and Visual Culture (Durham: Duke University Press, 2004). [Gerstner's faculty page.]
Regarding "Du Bois's Georgia Negro albums" exhibited in Paris Gerstner writes that Smith examines the way Du Bois presents the Viewable at Scope: An Online Journal of Film & TV Studies, at the University of Nottingham (Issue 3,
November 2005)http://www.scope.nottingham.ac.uk/bookreview.php?issue=3&id=88
Mixed Messages: Thomas Calloway and the "American Negro Exhibit" of 1900 by Miles E. Travis. MA Thesis in History, Montana State University, April 2004. Available online as a 2 megabyte PDF file (with photographs)http://etd.lib.montana.edu/etd/2004/travis/TravisM04.pdf
"W.E.B. Du Bois and the 1900 Paris Exhibition." This is a short, three-page section of a larger site called "America's Story from America's Library." The section briefly describes the background and rationale of the "Negro Exhibition" at Paris Exposition in the context of African Americans and the struggle for civil rights. Also, a few photos from the exhibition are displayed.
The site is sponsored by the U.S. Library of Congresshttp://www.americaslibrary.gov/. . . /activists/dubois/exhibit_1
[ Alternate site: http://www.americastory.gov/. . ./activists/dubois/exhibit_1 ]
"Small Nation, Large Lives" by John Vettese. This piece discusses Deborah Willis and her experiences while researching the essay she wrote for A Small Nation of People: W.E.B. Du Bois and African American Portraits of Progress (Amistad/HarperCollins, 2003) [the book also contained an essay by David Levering Lewis]. At Philadelphia City Paper, October 9-15, 2003
http://citypaper.net/articles/2003-10-09/cover2.shtml
"W.E.B. Du Bois' African-American Portraits" (at the 1900 Paris Exposition). Radio interview with Deborah Willis, co-author of A Small Nation of People.
Audio of the original broadcast, 2 December 2003, on "All Things Considered" (National Public Radio)http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1522978
"A Small Nation of People" (Book on the "Exhibit of American Negroes" at the 1900 World's Fair in Paris). This is a radio interview with Deborah Willis, the book's co-author, as conducted by Gwen Ifill.
Transcript of the interview on PBS' Newshour show of 8 January 2004http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/entertainment/jan-june04/willis_01-08.html
RELATED SOURCES
A listing of the various U.S. exhibitors represented at the Paris Exposition was published by the "1900 Commission to the Paris Exposition, United States" in the Catalogue of Exhibitors in the United States Sections of the International Universal Exposition, Paris, 1900 (Paris: Imprimeries Lemercier, 1900). Here is the complete entry on DuBois, W. E. B., Atlanta, Georgia.
Collective exhibit, results of social study of the negro [sic] in Georgia.
Another entry pointing to DuBois's work at the Exposition is also on p. 468:
Collective exhibit, results of social study of the negro [sic] in Georgia.
Atlanta University, Atlanta, Georgia.
Statistical charts showing development of negroes [sic] in America.
Statistical charts showing development of negroes [sic] in America.
Other African American exhibitors can be found, for example, on pp. 43-44 and on pp. 468-470. Also, one can use the "Search-in-this-book" feature in Google Books for this particular work. * It is interesting to note the following anonymously written passage in the prefatory section (p. 23):
The attitude of the United States of America before the other great nations of the world is interesting and peculiar. She is the first great republic of modern times founded upon the freedom, integrity, and intelligence of the citizen. She is free from the traditional inheritances which hamper nations of a longer life. She is isolated in her position, which has been to her a better protection than costly armaments. She has freed herself from the evil influences of human bondage. Her people are intelligent, industrious, and prosperous. She presents in the retrospective exposition of the nations, herself, her people, and her history.
Complete book can be viewed online or downloaded at Google Books
http://books.google.com/books?id=wEU1AAAAMAAJ&pg=PPA1 [Title page]
"The Country and the People of the United States" by Edward David Jones, a member of the United States Commission to the Paris Exposition of 1900. This 25-page document is part of the series, Monographs on American Social Economics, Vol. 2 (Department of Social Economy for the U.S. Commission to the Paris Exposition, 1900).
In a two-paragraph section, Jones presented a brief glimpse of African American progress on literacy, while repeating a common view about the declining percentage of Blacks in the population as a whole (perhaps based on Frederick Hoffman's book; see Note 1 below). In the second paragraph, arguably Jones can be read as indirectly providing an excuse for the electoral disfranchisement of African Americans. The following quotation from
NEGRO POPULATION
In 1890 the negro population was 7,470,040, or 11.93% of the whole population. [Map number omitted.--RWW] The negro has constituted a decreasing proportion of the total population for many years. Though the importation of slaves was suspended for many years prior to the civil war, the negro was given but meagre opportunities to advance in the culture scale under the influence of slavery. Since his emancipation his advancement has been marvellous. Of the illiteracy of the race 40% has been removed.
The present serious turning of the negro race from political ambitions to industrial education is most promising for the future. An acquaintance with those arts and trades and handicrafts which have made other races great and influential is necessary as a foundation for permanent race advancement.
[Note 1: The comment on "decreasing proportion" in the first paragraph is perhaps a reference to Frederick L. Hoffman, "The Race Traits and Tendencies of the American Negro" (Publications of the American Economic Association, Vol.11, No.1/3.(Jan.-Mar.-May 1896): pp.1-329).] [Note 2: The view of the second paragraph also can be found in an Emmett J. Scott article of 1901 describing the Tenth Annual Tuskegee Negro Conference. In his words: "We would urge our people not to become discouraged while the race is passing from what was largely a political basis to an economic one, as a foundation for citizenship." [p. 317] (Source: Scott, Emmett J. "Tenth Annual Tuskegee Negro Conference". African Methodist Episcopal Church Review, Vol. 17, Num. 4 (April 1901): pp. 314-320. Available online from the Ohio Historical Society: citation page).]
Complete document by Edward D. Jones available via Google's Book Search http://books.google.com/books?vid=OCLC40849214&id=yPaTk2TQWsgC
"Meta Warrick's 1907 'Negro Tableaux' and (Re)Presenting African American Historical Memory" by W. Fitzhugh Brundage and published in the Journal of American History, 89:4 (March 2003). Brundage briefly mentions DuBois in this article whose central focus is on the African American artist Meta Vaux Warrick (1877-1968). Via studying Warrick we can comprehend more fully the U.S. intellectual context that both she and Du Bois were addressing through their particular works. Brundage writes (in paragraphs 1 and 7, respectively): Confronting visitors who meandered through the Negro Building at the 1907 Jamestown Tercentennial Exposition, held in Norfolk, Virginia, was a tableau entitled Landing of First Twenty Slaves at Jamestown. Meta Warrick (Fuller), a sculptor, had created and arranged twenty-four two-foot-high plaster figures that re-imagined the shackled, nearly nude, and traumatized Africans who had landed in Jamestown in 1619. In Landing and thirteen other dioramas, she used more than 130 painted plaster figures, model landscapes, and backgrounds to give viewers a chronological survey of the African American experience. Scenes ranged from a tableau of a fugitive slave to a depiction of the home life of "the modern, successfully educated, and progressive Negro."[1] Drawing upon but moving beyond her classical training in Philadelphia and Paris, Warrick applied new capacities for simulation and illusion to the depiction of African American themes. By doing so, she expanded the repertoire of representation of the African American past. Incorporating the lives and concerns of African Americans into the saga of civilization, she turned the historical African American into the centerpiece of the saga, claiming a position the dominant white narrative denied. Her dioramas, which suggested the expansiveness of black abilities, aspirations, and experiences, presented a cogent alternative to white representations of history -- by an African American. [Note 1 omitted.]
[ .... Paragraphs 2 through 6 omitted .... ]
Yet, as Warrick's dioramas underscore, the participation of colonized and "primitive" peoples in expositions created opportunities for African Americans to destabilize the binary classification of civilization and "the other," of modernity and primitiveness. African Americans well understood the importance of how they were represented at world's fairs. When Du Bois surveyed with satisfaction the 1900 Paris exposition, he stressed with special emphasis that the "honest, straightforward exhibit" in the Negro Section was "above all" made by blacks. As the cultural theorist Walter Benjamin observed about film, new modes of representation "in the age of mechanical reproduction" empowered the masses to comprehend themselves for the first time.[6] Warrick's dioramas, similarly, enabled blacks to see themselves as the main actors in their own defined world. Whereas "Old South" concessions and anthropological exhibits organized by whites exhibited blacks, Warrick's dioramas represented them. The distinction between exhibiting and representing blacks was not just authorship but also agency. The Jamestown tableaux highlighted blacks' creative capacity, manifest in the very form of Warrick's creation, as well as black agency depicted in the narrative itself. By assuming responsibility for their own representation at expositions, African Americans grappled with the ideological schemata that undergirded fairs. Certainly Warrick contested in both subtle and obvious ways the overarching ambitions and assumptions about race, civilization, and progress that found expression at other parts of the Jamestown exposition. Thus, Warrick's dioramas illustrate how the new technologies and discourses of racial and imperial "truth" could be contested even in the setting where they were most powerfully articulated. [Footnote 6]
Du Bois, "American Negro at Paris," 577; Walter Benjamin, "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction," in Illuminations, ed. Hannah Arendt, trans. Harry Zohn (New York, 1985), 251.
[Webdubois.org Note: Du Bois' "American Negro at Paris" is available on this web site.]
At "Teaching the Journal of American History" [Site]http://www.indiana.edu/~jah/teaching/2003_03/index.shtml
PAN AMERICAN EXPOSITION OF 1901 AT BUFFALO, NY
The Phyllis Wheatley Club of Colored Women of Buffalo, New York, wished to provide an exhibit of African Americans for the Pan American Exposition of 1901 which was planned for Buffalo. The group brought the Exhibit of American Negroes from the 1900 Paris Exposition, which Du Bois and Calloway organized, and had it set up at the Pan American Exposition. In addition to the "Negro Exhibit", there was the "Darkest Africa" exhibit (with an African Village) and the "Old Plantation" exhibit.
"Black Faces at the Pan American Exposition of 1901, Buffalo, New York"
Uncrowned Queens Institute for Research and Education on Women
http://wings.buffalo.edu/uncrownedqueens/C/history/black_faces/index.htmlThe Negro Exhibit at the Pan American Exposition of 1901
wings.buffalo.edu/uncrownedqueens/C/history/black_faces/negro_exhibit.html
[Mirror at www.buffalonian.com/history/....]
Other web sites on the Pan American Exposition of 1901 (Buffalo, NY)
Through a Clouded Mirror: Africa at the Pan American Exposition, Buffalo 1901http://www.sciencebuff.org/africa_at_the_pan_american_exposition.php
[Note: This site is no longer accessible at <sciencebuff.org>. At least some
of the original site seems to be stored at the Internet Archive Wayback Machine.]
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