American Negro Exposition
The American Negro Exposition, also known as the Diamond Jubilee Exposition, was a significant cultural event that took place at the Chicago Coliseum from July 4 to September 4, 1940. Celebrating "75 years of Negro achievement," the exposition was directed by attorney Truman K. Gibson and supported by funding from President Franklin D. Roosevelt and the state of Illinois. It featured a wide array of exhibits that highlighted the accomplishments of African Americans from 1865 to 1940, including dioramas, murals, and portraits of notable figures. Noteworthy attractions included a display dedicated to the black community's contributions to Chicago, as well as various topical exhibits on health, education, and the arts.
The exposition attracted a diverse audience, drawing approximately 250,000 visitors, including many white attendees. It was complemented by performances from prominent African Americans, including boxing champion Joe Louis, and featured cultural programming produced by the Illinois Writers' Project. Despite its relatively low attendance compared to predictions, the event played a crucial role in unifying the black community and raising awareness about African American history and achievements. However, the outbreak of World War II soon overshadowed its impact on public consciousness.
American Negro Exposition
The Event Cultural event celebrating the achievements of black Americans since the 1863 Emancipation Proclamation
Date July 4-September 2, 1940
Place Chicago, Illinois
The exposition showed the diversity and vitality of black America at a time when racial discrimination often prevented this community’s voice from being heard effectively and clearly on a national scale.
The nonprofit American Negro Exposition (also popularly known as the Diamond Jubilee Exposition) opened its doors at the Chicago Coliseum on July 4, 1940, for a two-month run under the slogan “celebrating 75 years of Negro achievement.” The project was directed by attorney Truman K. Gibson and managed by a committee of three people, one appointed by Franklin D. Roosevelt and one each from the House of Representatives and the Senate, who worked with the Afra-Merican Emancipation Exposition Commission formed by Illinois governor Henry Horner. On May 25, 1940, President Roosevelt allocated $75,000 to the project, which was matched by the state of Illinois, and $15,000 was contributed by the Julius Rosenwald Fund. Enthusiasm for the event quickly spread through black America, with cities and states creating local commissions to affiliate with the main exposition authority in Chicago.
The executives of the exposition contacted prominent members of the African American community, inviting them to make appearances as their schedules allowed, among them future Supreme Court justice Thurgood Marshall, at the time legal counsel for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). TheIllinois Writers’ Project of the Works Progress Administration produced a companion volume to the exposition, the Cavalcade of the American Negro, under the editorship of Arna Bontemps. Illustrated by Adrian Troy of the Illinois Art Project, it provides a general if concise history of American black accomplishments between 1865 and 1940 and includes a description of all the exhibits mounted at the exposition. These included dioramas portraying the achievements of African Americans up to the end of the Civil War based on original drawings by artist William E. Scott, murals (among them the Fisk Jubilee Singers performing for Queen Victoria), and portraits of famous members of the black community, notably Robert Abbott, the recently deceased editor of the black weekly newspaper the Chicago Defender. Local history appeared in an exhibit on the black community as builders of Chicago (complete with a topographical map), while topical exhibits on aspects of the national black community ranged from public health, education, and art to eight federal agencies involved with community life. Major figures in the history and role of the black press in national progress were depicted in a mural by Charles White, while the sports exhibit was the personal contribution of boxing great Joe Louis. The exhibits represented the black communities of every American state, several Caribbean islands, and Liberia.
The planned disbanding of Chicago’s unit of the federal theater was postponed to allow the troupe members to perform in “Cavalcade of the Negro Theater” and a second show, “Tropics After Dark,” written by Bontemps and Langston Hughes. Weekly schedules containing an astonishing number of events were published in the Defender, ranging from days devoted to individual states and their black citizens to the work of black organizations as varied as the Urban League, the National Association of Negro Musicians, and the African Methodist Zion churches and Tuskegee Institute. The exposition organizers also originated the idea of a documentary on black schools and colleges, which was produced by the American Film Institute under the title One Tenth of Our Nation (1940).
Impact
The sheer diversity and national scope of the American Negro Exposition eventually drew a crowd of 250,000, including a significant number of whites, far short of the two million predicted. Although the ongoing war in Europe would nearly erase the exposition from public consciousness, the two-month-long fair galvanized the black community.
Bibliography
Green, Adam Paul. Selling the Race: Cultural Production and Notions of Community in Black Chicago, 1940-1955. Ph.D. dissertation, Yale University, 1998.
Rydell, Robert W. World of Fairs: The Century-of-Progress Expositions. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993.
Writers’ Program of the Work Projects Administration in the State of Illinois. Cavalcade of the American Negro. Chicago: Diamond Jubilee Exposition Authority, 1940.