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

Rating:
Summary: African Americans in the Chicago World's Fair of 1893
Review: 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.