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"THIS IS OUR FAIR AND OUR STATE": African Americans and the Panama-Pacific International Exposition Author(s): Lynn M. Hudson Source: California History, Vol. 87, No. 3 (2010), pp. 26-45, 66-68 Published by: University of California Press in association with the California Historical Society Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25702975 Accessed: 02-04-2015 18:06 UTC REFERENCES Linked references are available on JSTOR for this article: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25702975?seq=1&cid=pdf-reference#references_tab_contents You may need to log in to JSTOR to access the linked references. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. University of California Press and California Historical Society are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to California History. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 64.71.13.50 on Thu, 02 Apr 2015 18:06:50 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions "THIS IS OUR FAIR AND OUR STATE" African Americans and the Panama-Pacific International Exposition By Lynn M. Hudson It was an otherwise typical spring day in dous commitment to the progress of African San Francisco when the journalist Delilah Americans?landed her an extraordinary oppor Beasley made the journey across the bay tunity in theworld of journalism: writing for to the Panama-Pacific International Expo the leading white and black newspapers of the sition (PPIE) from her home in Berkeley on East Bay's largest city.A race woman2 and active June 10,1915. Beasley, writing simultaneously member of the black women's club movement, for northern California's mainstream daily and Beasley informed readers of thewonders of the largest newspaper, the Oakland Tribune, and for world's fair. But what did fairs?and their prom the black newspaper, the Oakland Sunshine, had ise of education and entertainment on a grand visited the world's fair before. But this time, she scale?mean for the state's African American went with a different purpose: towitness the population? And how would a black reporter Bay Area's African American citizens as they interpret their possibilities? marched in a parade at the state's most spectacu The year of the fair, 1915,marked a pivotal lar event of the year. Beasley and other African moment in the history of black Californians. In Americans believed that the PPIE was an ideal that year,African Americans formed northern setting to assert their presence as citizens. Black California's branch of the National Association Californians looked to Beasley, one of the state's for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) most influential black reporters, to convey news and organized a massive outcry against the about cultural events and the pressing political of African Americans in concerns a degrading portrayals of population living through the age Thomas Dixon's play, The Clansman, and D. W. of JimCrow. Griffith's newly released film version, The Birth Beasley had moved to California in 1910, already of a Nation. Beasley interpreted these events for a newspaperwoman. Born in Ohio in 1871, she a large California readership. Her viewpoint as career began her in journalism in theMidwest, a journalist and her role as a historian make her as a writing for the Cleveland Gazette teenager.1 a compelling figure through which to examine a nurse a She also studied to be and professional the convergence of these events in state history. masseuse, jobs that took her west to Berkeley Her commitment to thewomen's club move a a a with client. But lucky break?and tremen ment and the rights of black citizens provides a 26 California History volume 87 / number 3 / 2010 This content downloaded from 64.71.13.50 on Thu, 02 Apr 2015 18:06:50 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions ^^^^^^^^^^^^ IDelilah L. Beasley (1871-1934) achieved wide spread recognitionas a journalist and pioneering historian during a career spanning more thanfifty years.With her columnfor theOakland Tribune, 'Activitiesamong Negroes," she became thefirst black woman columnist in California at a major metropolitan newspaper. Throughout her career, Beasley worked tofight destructive representations ofAfrican Americans. In 1919, she self-published a historyof black Californians, The Negro Trail Blazers of California, inwhich she asserted, "The greatest literarywork done by theNegro is through his weekly papers." Courtesy, African American Museum and Library at Oakland (AAMLO) provocative lens through which to rethink the fair they took the lead in the state's branches of the and the state of race and gender politics for black NAACP, moving seamlessly from theirwork in Californians. the black women's club movement and churches to the "race work" of the nation's earliest civil Like other U.S. world's fairs, the PPIE empha rights organization. Beasley and other African sized nation and patriotism for a Euro largely American women used the fair to carve out real Americans' pean-American audience. African and figurative spaces inwhich to articulate their participation in the fair underscored the ways in political agendas and challenge JimCrow. By har which all black citizens, and especially women, nessing the language and symbols of patriotism found themselves pushed to themargins in state so prevalent at the fair, black Californians?men and national women had been politics. Though and women?claimed the nation as their own granted full suffrage by California's male voters at the precise moment that the social and politi four years earlier, were not yet considered they cal influences of Dixon's and Griffith's works equal participants inmatters of state. Yet black attempted to erase their history as citizens. women refused to stand on the political sidelines; 27 This content downloaded from 64.71.13.50 on Thu, 02 Apr 2015 18:06:50 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions can do black Asserting citizenship was a gendered affair,how Americans?6 What the responses of to PPIE tell us ever, and the language and symbols available to Californians the about African women differed from those accessible tomen. American citizenship and gender in 1915, at the era of To counter negative stereotypes, Beasley and height of the JimCrow? other club women sought to convey a message While there has been a significant amount of respectable black womanhood. With imagery of scholarship about the PPIE, most of ithas that often invoked family and domesticity, race focused on the exhibits, the architecture, and the women pushed at the definitions of state, nation, planners. Less has been written about spectators and womanhood. In their efforts to redefine pos and next to nothing about African Americans. sibilities for black Californians, they used every This has partly to do with the difficulty in locat venue at their disposal: the press, the church, ing sources; we do not have records that indi and exhibitions.* public parades, cate the number of black men and women who or the names and When a new technology called motion pictures attended the fair backgrounds made itsworld's fair debut at the PPIE, media of the African American workers, for example. PPIE also sawy Beasley anticipated its revolutionary poten The story of black Californians and the in the the tial to change hearts and minds. From her desk, has been eclipsed historiography by she sensed the time was right to change African better known and dramatic history of African American history amid the intersection of two Americans and the 1893 Chicago exposition. But contested and highly visible cultural events: a given the lessons thatworld's fairs impart about race world's fair and a motion picture, both attended the place of in the state and the nation, the PPIE in bymillions and both launched in her new prominence of the California's history, home state. and the timing of the fairwith one of themost significant protests in California black history, Scholars often have looked toworld's fairs, such the response of African Americans to the PPIE as London's Great Exhibition of or 1851 Chicago's deserves further consideration. World's Columbian Exposition of 1893, to under stand particular societies at particular times. Rob ert Rydell, for example, has argued that fairs have JIMCROW FAIR, JIMCROW STATE helped tomake sense of the upheaval and social California conjured up dreams of a racial Utopia disorder of industrializing societies by providing for some African Americans, but the state was a "community of shared experience."4 Society's not immune to racial discrimination, having elites organized fairs in order to present particu passed a series of discriminatory measures that lar visions of a well-ordered hierarchy that, not are commonly known as JimCrow laws. Since incidentally,married the ideas of progress and the nineteenth century,African American Cali white supremacy.5 The sheer popularity of the fornians customarily had been denied access eleven international expositions that occurred in to streetcars, public schools, theaters, bars, and the United States between 1876 and 1916 dem courtrooms. Following statehood, black leaders onstrates thatAmericans were, at the very least, and organizations campaigned vigorously to halt attracted to this shared experience and its unique the spread of segregation. After much effort, combination of education and entertainment. If, they reversed the antitestimony ban, winning the as Rydell has posited, "elaborate racial fantasies right in 1863 for blacks to give evidence in court about California's history" permeated the PPIE, against white citizens.

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