The Haytian Pavilion

ED: One thing you wouldn’t find on the fairgrounds was a building solely devoted to African-Americans. That was the case even though in the 30 years since the end of slavery, African-Americans had made major gains in law, medicine, technology, and the arts.

NATHAN: Considering the overall theme of the fair was progress, the exclusion of an exhibit explicitly dedicated to the advances of African-Americans was a slap in the face to many. But there was little they could do about it.

CHRISTOPHER REID: It’s similar to 21st century America, if you don’t have backers or you don’t control wealth, then you won’t be heard.

NATHAN: Historian Christopher Reid.

CHRISTOPHER REID: And then, of course, if you throw in the issue of race, you’ve got a double handicap. The result was, you had a rich man’s event presented to the global public in 1893.

NATHAN: But exclusion was an insult that would not be tolerated. Prominent black activists decided to write a pamphlet they would circulate to fair goers. Contributors included Frederick Douglass and journalists Ida B Wells.

FEMALE SPEAKER: The exhibit of the progress made by a race in 25 years of freedom, as against 250 years of slavery, would have been the greatest tribute to the greatness and progressiveness of the American institutions, which could have been shown the world. The colored people of this great republic number eight millions, more than 1/10 of the whole population of the United States.

CHRISTOPHER REID: And that same pamphlet had a another 20 page essay on the achievements of African-Americans as inventors, educators, political participants, as good citizens.

MALE SPEAKER: We earnestly desire to show some results of our first 30 years of acknowledged manhood and womanhood, wherein we have failed it has not been our fault but our misfortune. And it is sincerely hoped that this brief story not only of our successes but of trials and failures, our hopes and disappointments will relieve us of the charge of indifference and indolence.

NATHAN: Douglass and Wells were both at the fair. And you could find them at the one place where there was an official black presence, the Haitian pavilion.

CHRISTOPHER REID: The government of Haiti built a pavilion and it was the first structure constructed on the fairgrounds. And their building was built near the building from the United Kingdom, from the building from France, from Sweden, from Germany. And so to have that building on the fairgrounds gave African-Americans the opportunity to say, look at what black people have done.

And from that building, Frederick Douglass held sway as the voice of the Haitian people, and in the man, and as a black American he was also the voice of black America.

NATHAN: Haiti has selected Douglas as a representative because he had been US Minister to Haiti. And as the only country that had liberated itself from slavery and remained free, the Haitian pavilion embodied black progress to many African-American fair goers.

CHRISTOPHER REID: So the building was quite similar to the pavilions or structures that other nations built, not as elaborate, but it was a one story structure, ornate on the outside with, I’m assuming, elaborate furnishings inside so that people who visit it would be impressed with what Haiti wanted to be on the world scene. Whites felt comfortable coming into the movie and standing outside the pavilion, the same with African-Americans. It was a pleasant experience to go to the pavilion, see the pavilion, have cultural interchange with Frederick Douglass, and perhaps even hear his grandson play the violin inside the pavilion.

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NATHAN: Haitian coffee was served to visitors and the pavilion had an ambience of sophistication with Haitian and French influence.

CHRISTOPHER REID: Furniture and the paintings and the flora would have all been something that white Americans would have easily recognized as representative of a nation that was modern.

NATHAN: So not a lot of indigenous work, then, from local Haitians?

CHRISTOPHER REID: No, not really. There was not an indigenous reflection of Haiti. For example, the there was no connection between the people of Dahomey, the fine people of Dahomey, who had populated Haiti as slaves, no connection between the pavilion and them. And they were located about a mile west of the pavilion on the midway plaisance.

NATHAN: Now Frederick Douglass, in some of his speeches at the Haitian pavilion, will explicitly invoke the Dahomey village, won’t he?

CHRISTOPHER REID: Frederick Douglass had great disdain for the presence of the Dahomeans. Frederick Douglass, who was of mixed heritage, he was very modern and had nothing good to say about Dahomey village. And he did not speak about it on a regular basis. It did come up, from time to time, and there’s a famous statement he made about not measuring Negroes of the 1890s against the barbarism to be seen down at Dahomey village. He was quite conscious, as were many black Americans in the early 20th century, that the only way to prove worthiness to white Americans was to distance themselves from the image of Africa and the white man.

NATHAN: So Professor Reid, give me a sense of what African-Americans did to try to get to the fair. How many of them might have been able to get there? And what was their experience once they arrived on the fairgrounds?

CHRISTOPHER REID: Once African-Americans heard that there was going to be a World’s Fair and that they would be included to some extent, perhaps not meeting their fondest expectations, but they would be welcomed in Chicago, by the thousands they made plans to travel by railroad to Chicago. And the railroads accommodated their desires by having group fares. And some black entrepreneurs in the city even built some structures to house visitors to the city. Coming to Chicago meant you were free and you could see the best of America. The fair offered spaciousness, electric lighting, flush toilets, food samples.

I’ve seen photographs of blacks standing in the midst of whites watching lion training, often you know the fairgrounds in the midway. When people didn’t enjoy themselves on the fairgrounds, they visited black churches and black homes, and took advantage of the hospitality afforded in those venues. By the way, a group met in Chicago during the fair and made plans to run a black man for president, which was done in 1904. And over eight days, there was a conference sponsored by the nation’s congregationalists to discuss the matter of leaving America for Africa, or remaining here, making this a better place to live.

The final decision by the man who was to marry Ida B Wells was, we’re going to stay and continue to improve conditions in this country for everyone.

NATHAN: So Professor Reid, being from Chicago, knowing the South side, do you ever go down to the old midway or see yourself on the former fairgrounds and imagine what it was like then?

CHRISTOPHER REID: Oh yes, yes. I’ve done that many times. I live near the fairgrounds. And I have quite an imagination, being an historian. I’ve often thought what it would have been like to have ridden on the 1,000-plus seat Ferris wheel. Then on the other hand, I’m afraid of heights. I would have enjoyed myself had I been there in 1893.

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NATHAN: Christopher Reid is Professor emeritus of history at Roosevelt University and the author of All the World is Here The Black Presence at White City.