The Reason Why the Colored America Is Not in the World's Columbian Exposition: The Afro-American Contribution to Columbian Literature

The Reason Why the Colored American is Not in the World's Columbian Exposition: The Afro-American Contribution to Columbian Literature. By Ida B. Wells, Frederick Douglass, Irvine Garland Penn, and Ferdinand Barnett. Edited by Robert W. Rydell (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1999. Pp. xlviii, 81. Illustrations. Cloth, $29.95; Paper $14.95.) Robert W. Rydell as editor of The Reason Why the Colored American Is Not in the World's Columbian Exposition: The Afro-American Contribution to Columbian Literature has helped to rescue from near obscurity this important pamphlet written by African American leaders Ida B. Wells, Frederick Douglass, Irvine Garland Penn, and Ferdinand Barnett, on the eve of the World's Columbian Exposition, also known as the Chicago World's Fair of 1893 and as the White City. Rydell's new introduction provides historical context for the booklet, which is an important source of primary data about late nineteenth century African American and American history. The Chicago World's Fair was "held to commemorate the 400th anniversary of Columbus's landfall in the New World and was designed to advance the causes of American nationalism, imperialism, and consumerism," according to Rydell (xi). President Benjamin Harrison appointed two bodies to work with local business and political leaders to plan the fair: the all-male United States National Commission and a separate women's group, the Board of Lady Managers. Neither group included African Americans. Black leaders, including Wells, Douglass, Penn, and Barnett, and many others, were incensed over this deliberate and obvious omission, and immediately sought inclusion for African Americans. After attempts to get black appointees to these two boards and other subordinate groups failed, Wells, Douglass, Penn, and Barnett, with financial support from Frederic Loudin and other blacks, published The Reason Why. The purpose of this booklet was to make others aware that blacks were not included on the planning boards for the fair and to explain why blacks were not included. The Reason Why included a preface in three languages English, French, and German - a very powerful introduction by Frederick Douglass, and five additional, well-argued essays. The pamphlet addressed various issues, including the general denial of black civil and political rights, African Americans' unequal access to public accommodations, their increasing disfranchisement, and the growing number of lynchings. The group contended that the omission of African Americans from the planning of the World's Fair presaged their exclusion from the international showcase provided by the Fair. The four leaders argued that African Americans were excluded from the planning of the fair because the U.S. wanted to keep them in a state of surrogate slavery characterized by a subordinate position in education, politics, and economics. Further, the United States did not want to acknowledge the remarkable strides that blacks had made in the twenty-eight years since emancipation. In an essay entitled "The Progress of the Afro-American since Emancipation," educator and journalist Irvine Garland Penn addressed the advancements that African Americans had made in the post-slavery era. Penn argued that African Americans had progressed "in education, in the professions, [and] in the accumulation of wealth and literature" (44). …