All the World Is Here!

"In 1893 Ida Wells, Frederick Douglass, et al. wrote a pamphlet entitled The Reason Why the Colored American Is Not in the World's Columbian Exposition, a text that formed the basis for the subsequent view of African American history. In fact, as Reed so successfully shows, there was considerable African American participation in, and representation at, the fair, but it was from classes and in ways that did not meet the approval of the elite black leadership. Discussing the issues of class and caste within the US's black community, the author shows how the Columbian Exposition became a battleground between the Afro—Saxon elite, who wished to avoid all mention of a separate history with African roots, and a new respectable class one generation removed from slavery, a class that glorified in its own achievements. This entrancing book looks at this clash in four parts—the conflict nationally, in Chicago, at the fair, and in reactions to the African exhibits and congresses at the fair. An important reexamination of African American history, especially in that it introduces a large number of African American individuals of accomplishment little known today, this volume includes significant, but poorly reproduced, illustrations to support the argument. All academic and public collections.October 2000"—R. T. Brown, Westfield State College

• PrefaceAcknowledgementsIntroductionPart One: Around the Nation1.Expectations2.Participation and Protest3.Race, Class, GenderPart Two: In Host City Chicago4.The Domain of Work5.The Social OrderPart Three: At the Fair6."They Met at the Fair": Linkages7.The Scope of InvolvementPart Four: "All the World is Here!"8.Continental Africa at the Fair: Dahomey Village9.On the Fairgrounds: The Haytian Pavilion10.Diasporan and Continental Africa Meet: The Congress on AfricaAppendix I: Frederick Douglass's Speech at Colored American DayAppendix II: Colored People's Blue BookAppendix III: Commentaries from Midway Types Appendix IV: "Judge," a poem by A. T. WordenNotesIndex