All the World is Here!: The Black Presence at White City

By Christopher Robert Reed

Book Overview

"This entrancing book looks at the clash of class and caste within the black community] . . . . An important reexamination of African American history."
--Choice

The 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago showed the world that America had come of age. Dreaming that they could participate fully as citizens, African Americans flocked to the fair by the thousands. "All the World Is Here " examines why they came and the ways in which they took part in the Exposition. Their expectations varied. Well-educated, highly assimilated African Americans sought not just representation but also membership at the highest level of decision making and planning. They wanted to participate fully in all intellectual and cultural events. Instead, they were given only token roles and used as window dressing. Their stories of pathos and joy, disappointment and hope, are part of the lost history of "White City." Frederick Douglass, who embodied the dream that inclusion within the American mainstream was possible, would never forget America's World's Fair snub.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0253215358
• ISBN13: 9780253215352
• Release Date: February 2002
• Publisher: Indiana University Press
• Length: 264 Pages
• Weight: 0.85 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 6.3" x 9.3"
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

African Americans in the Chicago World's Fair of 1893

Christopher Reed has made another wonderful contribution to the historical scholarship. The current book is a very well-researched, compellingly argued refutation of the claim made by some contemporaries of the World's Columbian Exhibition of 1893 that African American participation in the event was very limited. Reed has shown that many blacks--both well-known and anonymous--attended the world's fair in various capacities. The photographs reinforce this point also. Reed further contends that the very high stature of Ida B. Wells, Frederick Douglass, Ferdinand Barnett, and I. Garland Penn, the authors of an 1893 booklet called The Reason Why the Colored American Is Not Present in the World's Columbian Exposition, and the attention which the work drew from historians has led many to erroneously believe that there was virtually no black participation in the aforementioned event.