Introduction

By a sort of national common consent, she has had no place

in the Republic of free and independent womanhood of
America. Slavery left her in social darkness, and freedom
has been slow in leading her into the daylight of the virtues.
—Fannie Barrier Williams

“All through the darkest period of the colored women’s oppression in this
country her yet unwritten history is full of heroic struggle, a struggle against
fearful and overwhelming odds, that often ended in a horrible death, to main-
tain and protect that which woman holds dearer than life.”1 The words spo-
ken by Washington, D.C.–based author, teacher, activist, and scholar Anna
Julia Cooper on May 18, 1893 at the World’s Fair: Columbian Exposition in
Chicago, Illinois, centered on the lives of black women. Her speech, as well
as those of five other emergent and prominent African American women
leaders, Fannie Barrier Williams, Frances E. W. Harper, Fanny Jackson Cop-
pin, Sarah J. Early, and Hallie Q. Brown, forcefully and powerfully inserted
the voices, standpoints, and experiences of African American women into
a space committed to celebrating the triumphs of white men in the United
States. From May 1 to October 30, 1893, the grand spectacle of the World’s
Fair formally commemorated the four-hundredth anniversary of Christo-
pher Columbus’s arrival to the New World in 1492. Although the dedication
ceremonies took place on October 21, 1892, the fairgrounds did not open to
the public until May 1 of the following year. Pivoting around and propelling
the ideas of American industrial optimism and American exceptionalism,
the unprecedented World’s Fair welcomed more than twenty-seven million
people who would marvel at a wide range of exhibitions trumpeting innova-
tion and progress. The global scope of the fair, which included representations
of nearly fifty peoples and cultures, however, did not overpower the broader
message of white male supremacy in the United States.2

Lindsey text.indd 1 3/9/17 3:15 PM

 2  .  INT RODUCT ION

The fair symbolized both the city’s ascendance from the literal and figura-
tive ashes of the Great Chicago Fire and the nation’s emergence as a “recon-
structed” global power. Despite being only twenty-eight years past the Civil
War and sixteen years past the formal end of Reconstruction, the exposition
anchored this new moment in U.S. history in the discovery of the New World
by Europe, and indirectly, though perhaps intentionally, in the subsequent
annihilation and marginalization of the First Nation and Indigenous peoples
of the Americas and the enslavement of African people. Cooper, in speaking
for “colored women from the South,” commenced her address by highlight-
ing that “millions of blacks in this country have watered the soil with blood
and tears, and it is there too that the colored woman of America has made
her characteristic history, and there her destiny is evolving.”3 Her words pro-
vided a black-women-centered counternarrative to the “discovery” narrative
promoted by the fair through Cooper’s centering the enslavement of black
people as foundational to the nation’s history. Cooper also skillfully wove
in the brevity of thirty years in marking the progress of a formerly enslaved
people. More critical, however, was that Cooper pushed against a linear nar-
rative of progress of African Americans by emphasizing that “since emancipa-
tion the movement has been at times confused and stormy, so that we could
not always tell whether we were going forward or groping in a circle.”4 The
combination of an abrupt end to Reconstruction in 1877, over a decade of
post-Reconstruction efforts by African American communities to re-imagine
their futures without concerted federal investment, and the earliest iterations
of Jim Crow in state constitutions in the 1890s grounded Cooper’s statement
about the uncertainty and precariousness of progress for African Americans
thirty years post-Emancipation.5 The political fire and exigency of her words
departed from the fair’s overarching, celebratory cultural tone.
Only a year prior to the World’s Fair, Anna Julia Cooper published the
germinal black protofeminist text, A Voice from the South: From a Woman
from the South. Her book, which lauded self-determination through social
uplift and education for African American women, concretized in print a
growing political sensibility among many black women. Cooper’s words at
the Exposition naturally overlapped and connected with those of the other
African American women speakers. Her speech echoed some of the core
arguments of her book and further heralded both the triumphs of and dy-
namic possibilities for African American women. Cooper’s book and her
speech at the fair further solidified her status as one of the most recognized
and respected voices illuminating the lived experiences of African American
women.6 An educator and administrator at the prestigious African Ameri-

Lindsey text.indd 2 3/9/17 3:15 PM

 INT RODUCT ION   ·  3

can M Street High School in Washington, D.C., and an author and speaker,
Cooper had both local and national stature. By the time Cooper established
herself as a fixture in the African American public sphere in the nation’s
capital, Washington thrived as an intellectual, cultural, and social center
for black people in the United States. Black Washington cultivated Cooper’s
growth as a thinker, educator, administrator, and activist. Her words at the
World’s Fair and in her book built upon the unique cultivation as a black
Washington woman and an emergent New Negro woman.
At the core of New Negro womanhood was a fundamental transformation
in how African American women viewed themselves as participants and
authorial figures in the modern world. The activities of clubwomen, black
suffragists, teachers in newly established “Colored”7 schools, beauticians, and
domestics, from the late nineteenth century until the mid-twentieth century,
composed the New Negro womanhood experience. Clubwomen advocated
for the advancement of African American women in a post-Emancipation/
Progressive Era context. Black suffragists demanded universal suffrage and
emphasized the importance of the franchise for African American women
at the turn of the twentieth century. African American teachers educated a
new generation of African Americans, and particularly African American
women, in a range of professions. Beauticians were among the most successful
entrepreneurs and innovators during this era. Domestics and sharecroppers
were the backbone of poor and working-class black communities. Although
not enslaved, the conditions and hardships black domestics often endured
in the homes of white families resembled those of the recent era of chattel
slavery.8 As African American women grappled with post-Reconstruction
and Jim Crow realities, they began to articulate new ideas about race, class,
gender, and sexuality. These evolving articulations, particularly in black urban
centers like Washington, challenged the status of African American women
in public life.
The tensions surrounding black women’s participation in the World’s Fair
paralleled local struggles of African American women in Washington to
become fuller participants in black public life. Before these six women were
added to the program, black leaders throughout the United States protested
their exclusion from the fair’s planning.9 Ida B. Wells, Frederick Douglass,
educator Irvine Garland Penn, and lawyer and newspaper publisher Ferdi-
nand L. Barnett directly addressed the lack of a substantial African Ameri-
can presence at the fair in “The Reason Why the Colored American Is Not
at the Columbian Exposition.” Wells was the primary author of the scathing
document. She eloquently and passionately states in the volume’s preface:

Lindsey text.indd 3 3/9/17 3:15 PM

 4  .  INT RODUCT ION

The exhibit of the progress made by a race in 25 years of freedom as against

250 years of slavery, would have been the greatest tribute to the greatness and
progressiveness of American institutions which could have been shown the
world. The colored people of this great Republic number eight millions—more
than one-tenth the whole population of the United States. They were among
the earliest settlers of this continent, landing at Jamestown, Virginia in 1619 in
a slave ship, before the Puritans, who landed at Plymouth in 1620. They have
contributed a large share to American prosperity and civilization. The labor
of one-half of this country has always been, and is still being done by them.
The first crédit this country had in its commerce with foreign nations was
created by productions resulting from their labor. The wealth created by their
industry has afforded to the white people of this country the leisure essential
to their great progress in education, art, science, industry and invention.
Those visitors to the World’s Columbian Exposition who know these facts,
especially foreigners will naturally ask: Why are not the colored people, who
constitute so large an element of the American population, and who have con-
tributed so large a share to American greatness, more visibly present and better
represented in this World’s Exposition? Why are they not taking part in this
glorious celebration of the four-hundredth anniversary of the discovery of their
country? Are they so dull and stupid as to feel no interest in this great event? It
is to answer these questions and supply as far as possible our lack of represen-
tation at the Exposition that the Afro-American has published this volume.10

The volume detailed both the limited representation of the “Colored” ex-
perience in the United States and the lack of African American attendees.
The six African American women speakers forcefully counteracted the scarce
visibility of African Americans and African American culture at the fair by
refusing the erasure of black women’s voices, experiences, and history. Coo-
per, Williams, Harper, Coppin, Early, and Brown spoke as part of the World’s
Congress of Representative Women, one of the many forums of the World’s
Fair. Held May 15 through May 22, 1893, in the World’s Congress Auxiliary
Building at the fairgrounds, the congress organized eighty-one meetings
and attracted more than 150,000 people. Of the five hundred women who
spoke, representing twenty-seven different countries, only six of the featured
speakers were African American women. The words these women spoke at
the World’s Fair thereby stood as representative of an “African American
women’s standpoint” and carried tremendous significance. Their speeches,
I argue, were points of origin for New Negro womanhood. In front of a pre-
dominantly white audience and with the world listening, the words and pres-
ence of these African American women signaled a new era of black women’s

Lindsey text.indd 4 3/9/17 3:15 PM

 INT RODUCT ION   ·  5

voices audaciously demanding to be heard and valued on their own terms.

The discourse of New Negro womanhood preemptively responded to the
growing popularity of Jim Crow being etched into state constitutions as well
as the rise of the white-woman-centered “Women’s Era.” Cooper’s words in
particular resonated as those spoken by someone with experiences as a black
woman in Washington and as a black woman with access to a national audi-
ence. Her local experiences, derived from living and working in a U.S. black
cultural and political center, positioned Cooper as a dynamic interlocutor
of African American women’s experiences.
The appointment of Fannie Barrier Williams to a position in which she
gathered exhibits for the women’s hall provided black women, although on
very limited and restrictive terms, an opportunity to take part in a monu-
mental moment in U.S. history. Each of the women who spoke at the fair used
her speech to directly address the lives and aspirations of black women. A
burgeoning consciousness manifested in the words Cooper, Williams, Cop-
pin, Early, Harper, and Brown delivered at the Columbia Exposition. During
the speech titled “The Intellectual Progress of Colored Women in the United
States since the Emancipation Proclamation,” which brought Williams to
greater national prominence, she proclaimed,
Less than thirty years ago the term progress as applied to colored women of
African descent in the United States would have been an anomaly. The recog-
nition of that term today as appropriate is a fact full of interesting significance.
That the discussion of progressive womanhood in this great assemblage of the
representative women of the world is considered incomplete without some
account of the colored women’s status is a most noteworthy evidence that
we have not failed to impress ourselves on the higher side of American life.11

Williams also heralded possibility for African American women. Deliver-

ing her words to an audience of primarily white women, she affirmed, “The
exceptional career of our women will yet stamp itself indelibly upon the
thought of this country.”12 Williams set a tone for a distinct African American
women’s standpoint at this highly publicized and massively attended event.
She, like her African American women counterparts, was direct, unapolo-
getic, and critical.
Thematically similar, though more geographically rooted in the South,
Coppin, Early, and Brown decried the pervasive racism, sexism, and poverty
African American women faced. Jackson told the audience at the World’s
Congress of Representative Women that “there is a time coming when preju-
dices, discriminations, proscriptions, and persecutions on account of what is

Lindsey text.indd 5 3/9/17 3:15 PM

 6  .  INT RODUCT ION

accidental will all pass away.”13 Jackson’s words resounded as a clear critique
of the “accidental” fiction of race. An optimistic tone pervaded the words of
each of the featured African American women speakers. Despite their initial
exclusion from the official program, they seized the opportunity to speak for
and on behalf of black women and offered ideas rooted in history, hope, and
ideas about self-determination. More specifically, their words foreshadowed
a growing number of African Americans desiring new constructs for identi-
fying their experiences. Nowhere was the desire more palpable than among
black women in the nation’s capital at the turn of twentieth century.
The marginalization of African Americans, and more specifically African
American women at the Columbian Exposition, reflected the continued
inferior political, social, economic, and cultural status that blacks in the
United States occupied. On the World’s Fair stage, these women confronted
the hypocrisy of the narrative of national progress in the face on inertia of
issues regarding racial and gender inequality. Similar to the nation’s capital,
the World’s Fair boasted unprecedented but nevertheless limited possibilities
for African American women to take center stage. Although Washington was
an African American urban center, black women living there confronted
the harsh and pervasive realities of Jim Crow racism, intra- and interracial
sexism, and institutional patriarchy. These realities often led to a silencing
of the women living in and migrating to the nation’s capital in search of new
opportunities.

From the Nation’s Capital to the World

During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, millions of African
Americans moved to cities such as New York, Chicago, Baltimore, Philadel-
phia, and Washington in search of opportunities and to escape the harsh
realities of southern racism.14 Black migration to Washington between 1860
and 1900, however, had more profound demographic implications than it did
in other urban areas during the same period. Ultimately, between 1860 and
1930 the population of black women in the District of Columbia increased
by more than 800 percent. The federal census of 1860 reported that 8,402
black women lived in Washington; in 1890, the total was 41,581; by 1930, there
were 69,843 black women living there.15 By 1910, Washington had a total
black population of 94,000. Whereas Harlem attracted tens of thousands of
African Americans in the interwar years, Washington throughout the early
to mid-twentieth century continued to have the greatest concentration of
African Americans in any of the large U.S. metropolitan areas.16

Lindsey text.indd 6 3/9/17 3:15 PM