Good for Whom? Olmsted, Parks, and Public Good
Adding Contexts of Settler Colonialism and Systemic Racism
"Progress" for Whom?
Contextualizing the World's Columbian Exposition
Content Warning: This section contains information that is painful to read and process. It is included because this guide is committed to sharing the truth of the past so that we do not forget this violence and so that we can do all in our power to prevent it from repeating.
This section is about the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition and includes links that reference human beings being exhibited to reinforce the white supremacist ideology of "race science."
Click on this text to proceed.
Facing History has created a lesson on the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition, also known as the Chicago World's Fair. The Exposition was a commemoration of 400 years since Christopher Columbus' 1492 voyage to the Americas, which included harmful portrayals of people of color used to purport white supremacist ideas about racial difference:
"At the nearby Midway Plaisance—a strip of land a mile long and 600 feet wide across from the White City, visitors encountered a lesson in 'race science' and social Darwinism. Here they saw 'living exhibits'—representatives of the world’s 'races' including Africans, Asians, and American Indians." There was vocal resistance at the time to the dehumanizing exhibits from African American leaders and Indigenous leaders.
Critical Inquiry: Whose "progress" was celebrated at the Exposition? Why do you think this was?
What progress do parks and public natural spaces represent to you? What human, social, and environmental costs are associated with this progress?
Resistance to Native Erasure & Harmful Portrayals
Emma Sickels, chair of the Indian Committee of the Universal Peace Union, wrote this in response to the harmful portrayals of Native Americans at the Exposition:
"The Indian agents and their backers knew well that if the civilized Indians got a representation in the Fair the public would wake up to the capabilities of the Indians for self-government and realize that all they needed was to be left alone."
Resistance to White City & White Supremacy
African Americans were largely excluded from the Exposition's "White City," a futuristic "utopic" American city exhibit. Ida B. Wells-Barnett, renowned journalist best known for her reporting on lynchings of Black Americans, wrote an incisive response to the exclusion and called for boycott. Fellow civil rights activists Frederick Douglass, Irvine Garland Penn, and Ferdinand Lee Barnet also contributed, and between 10,000 and 20,000 copies of the pamphlet were circulated.
You can view the manuscript in its entirety as images from the Frederick Douglass Papers at the Library of Congress or Penn Libraries Digital Projects hosts a text version with content warnings.
Continue the Conversation
Connect with the Gordon Library at www.wpi.edu/library.
If questions about digital scholarship, curation, social justice and sustainability align with your research interests, we'd love to connect. Email us at gr-dswp@wpi.edu.