Race, Empire, and Modernity at the Atlanta and Nashville International Expositions, 1895- 1897
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“A Dream of the Future”: Race, Empire, and Modernity at the Atlanta and Nashville International Expositions, 1895- 1897 by Nathan Charles Arthur Cardon A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy History University of Toronto © Copyright by Nathan Cardon 2014 “A Dream of the Future” Race, Empire, and Modernity at the Atlanta and Nashville International Expositions, 1895-1897 Nathan Charles Arthur Cardon Doctor of Philosophy History University of Toronto 2014 Abstract For a region often viewed as outside the processes of modernization, the United States South’s international expositions were symbolic opportunities to demonstrate its embrace of a narrative of industrial, cultural, and racial progress. Taking the 1895 Atlanta Cotton States and International Exposition and the 1897 Nashville Tennessee Centennial Exposition as an analytical basis, this dissertation investigates how southerners transformed modernity by making it “Jim Crow.” It explores the ways white and African American southerners performed a variety of racialized and classed identities that embraced and critiqued modern progress. Responding to the dissolution of old certainties, southerners turned to science and technology as a stable site of truth and meaning. At the same time, their response to modernity was rooted in the South and its developing “New South” cities. In these cities southerners formulated a distinctive modernity that was compatible with the region’s racial dynamics and was adopted by the North as the nation expanded and encountered non-white colonial subjects. This dissertation makes clear the ways in which southerners, often considered on the periphery of change, responded to dislocating events by rooting their responses in the local. The specific economic, social, racial, and political realities of the South all shaped southerners reactions to and articulations of ii modernity and empire. By narrowing the question of southern modernity to a specific time and space this dissertation redefines a key moment in southern and American history, showing how responses to the dislocating effects of modernity were grounded in the specific temporal and spatial contexts of the South and were exported as American empire. iii Acknowledgments Like any project that covers six years of one’s life there are many people, places, and institutions to thank. On the research front, grants from the School of Graduate Studies, Department of History, and Centre for the Study of the United States at the University of Toronto allowed me to spend my summers sweating, eating BBQ, and researching in places like Tennessee, Georgia, North Carolina, and Washington, D.C. An Ontario Graduate Scholarship and a yearlong fellowship at the Jackman Humanities Institute gave me the opportunity to take a break from teaching and concentrate on finishing my dissertation. My year spent at the JHI was filled with pleasant and intellectually stimulating conversations on that year’s theme of “location / dislocation” along with copious amounts of espresso. I, perhaps, will never have as nice an office. This project would not have been possible without the generous staff of archives and libraries across the United States and Canada. I would like to thank the staff at Fisk University, the Kenan Research Center at the Atlanta History Center, the Manuscripts and Rare Book Library at Emory University, the Smithsonian National Museum of American History Library, the South Historical Collection at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, the Nashville Public Library, the Tennessee State Library and Archives, and Robarts Library at the University of Toronto. A special shout out is deserved for the staff of Trinity College Library at the University of Toronto who put up with my daily appearance for a good part of a decade. Numerous scholars lent me insights that vastly improved this dissertation. At the University of Toronto I would like to thank Elspeth Brown, Russ Kazal, Jens Hanssen, Thomas Lahusen, Carol Chin, Pamela Klassen, and Eric Jennings. Thank you to my external reader, W. Fitzhugh Brundage, whose critiques will make this a better manuscript one day. To my “fourth” iv committee member, Davarian Baldwin at Trinity College, Hartford your insights and willingness to invest in me has been a wonderful boost to my scholarship and confidence, thank you. I want to thank my advisor Rick Halpern for plucking me out of the undergraduate wilderness and suggesting that I may have a future in the Academy. His constant support— emotional, intellectual, and financial—has allowed me to pursue my academic goals. On my committee, Dan Bender provided a voice of constructive criticism. If it were not for his insights and his desire to push me intellectually this project would have suffered. Michael Wayne is a true mentor for someone who wishes to be a well-rounded academic. Our conversations and my time spent working for him deeply influenced my thinking on race in America. A central part of getting through graduate school is to have a diverse group of friends both within and outside the program. To the Americanists at the University of Toronto, Ian Rocksborough-Smith, Camille Begin, Paul Lawrie, Nancy Catton, Benjamin Pottruff, Brandon King, and Holly Karibo, a big thank you for motivating me in this project through encouragement and explication. My friends outside of the program who lived real lives and got real careers also deserve mention as they convinced me to never take myself too seriously and reminded me there was a life outside the university. Thank you to T. Lowell Heppner and Taryn Diamond, Andrew Moore, the Calgary Crew, and Ben Porter and Laura Zijeck plus little Lenka. Special mention to Steven Tam, Samuel Schacar, and Sina Akbari for introducing me to the pleasures of life on two wheels. This project would not have been possible without the help of my family. My maternal grandparents, Lydia and Arthur Kublick, believed in me from the start. My in-laws, Lois and David Butler, never questioned, to me at least, their daughter’s decision to marry an academic. My brother Aaron, outgoing and gregarious (the opposite of me, really), was in so many ways v supportive. To my parents, thank you for the love across the years. Over many a conversation in the car trips to and from hockey, my father, Norm Cardon, instilled in me a confidence to express my thoughts and opinions. My mother, Cheryl Cardon, gave me a love of reading from an early age and encouraged an inquisitive and, at times, over-imaginative mind. This dissertation is dedicated to them. Lastly, to my wife, partner, and co-conspirator, Laura Ann Butler, you have been an editor, a confidant, a lover, and a friend when I needed one the most. I really can’t imagine my life without you. I am excited for our next chapter together. vi Table of Contents INTRODUCTION 1 CHAPTER 1. “A PROPHECY OF OUR GLORY AND POWER IN THE FUTURE”: THE NEW SOUTH VISION OF THE ATLANTA AND NASHVILLE EXPOSITIONS 32 CHAPTER 2. “WE SHOULD SHOW THEM WHAT A SEPARATE PEOPLE CAN DO”: THE SOUTH’S NEW NEGROES AND AFRICAN AMERICAN VISIONS OF PROGRESS 81 CHAPTER 3. NEW WOMEN, NEW SOUTH: FEMININITY AND WOMANHOOD AT THE EXPOSITIONS 142 CHAPTER 4. “FROM PITIFUL RESOURCES A GREAT AND EXPANDING EMPIRE”: THE EXPOSITIONS AND THE FORMATION OF A NEW SOUTH EMPIRE 190 CHAPTER 5. “THE LEGIONS IN BLUE AND GRAY”: SECTIONAL RECONCILIATION AT THE EXPOSITIONS 236 CODA: A DREAM OR NIGHTMARE? 275 FIGURES 298 BIBLIOGRAPHY 314 vii List of Figures Figure I: World's Columbian Exposition's “White City.” Figure II: The Cotton States and International Exposition Figure III: Tennessee Centennial Exposition Figure IV: Tennessee Centennial at Night Figure V: The Parthenon Figure VI: The New South—The Triumph of Free Labor Figure VII: Cotton States Negro Building Figure VIII: Chains Broken Statue Figure IX: DC Exhibit Figure X: Centennial Negro Building Figure XI: Dahomey Village Figure XII: Cotton States Woman’s Building Figure XIII: Centennial Woman’s Building Figure XIV: Unaccompanied Women Figure XV: Sham Battle Figure XVI: Chinese Village viii Introduction Go into the country, almost within sight of the spires and lofty housetops of bustling, progressive Atlanta, and you will find yourself among a primitive people, who know little or nothing of the great world which lies beyond their ken of vision…To such as these the Exposition comes as a revelation. They gaze at its wonders without comprehending them, but what they see and hear cannot fail to loosen the bonds of lethargy which have compressed their faculties, and awaken new ideas and ambition in their dormant brains.” – New York at the Cotton States In the 1880s and 1890s the United States South had a problem on its hands. Despite the best efforts of a solidifying middle class, northerners viewed the former states of the Confederacy as backwards and outside modernity. In the day’s popular culture and literature, southerners, white and African American, were lambasted for their uncouth behavior, social problems, and stunted economic growth. In the last decades of the nineteenth century an answer to this problem was found in the industrial exposition movement sweeping the Western world. Beginning in 1881 with Atlanta’s International Cotton Exposition, southern cities hosted international expositions, also known as world’s fairs, to attract investment, advertise the region’s resources, and promote a distinctly southern identity and culture. The South’s expositions were representative of an ideology that called for a “New South” based not on the region’s agrarian past but one defined by urban industrial manufacturing. The expositions presented a southern future of a scientific and diversified economy based on a racially 1 hierarchical society. They were advertisements for and articulations of a unique southern modernity, a Jim Crow modernity.1 With the exception of the New Orleans World Cotton Centennial in 1884, the South’s world’s fairs remained small and lacked federal appropriations.