“America’s Making” Exposition, Part II: Black Americans

Our second post about NYC’s pro-immigration, pro-pluralism exposition held in October and November of 1921. (See our November 4 post introducing the event here.)

One hundred years ago today … “America’s Making” exposition continued with “Negro Night,” an evening devoted to the Black population of the US. The catalog of the exposition, printed by the Departments of Education of New York City and State describes the contributions of Black people and includes enslavement as context, though not giving adequate attention to the institution:

Negro labor in slavery and freedom, cleared the forests and swamps for the great agricultural regions of the South. It entered America one year before the Puritans and only twelve years after the Cavaliers. From the early 17th Century to the present day, Negro labor has been indispensable in the fundamental industries of the South. On its work depend the great crops of cotton, sugar, tobacco and rice. 

The page also credits Black culture with creating “the only distinctively ‘American’ music; the ‘Sorrow Songs’ or Jubilee Music and the syncopated instrumental and vocal rhythms.” 

The illustration is of the sculpture by Meta Vaux Warwick Fuller, whom we have also encountered in the catalog for the first exhibit of Black arts at the 134th Street Library, August-September 1921 (which we posted about here.).

The exposition’s day devoted to Black culture featured, as described by the Times, “ Plantation melodies, negro campmeeting hymns, rag time and plantation tableaux.”

Among the musical numbers were songs by negro composers, including H. T. Burleigh, R. Nathaniel Dett and J. Rosemond Johnson. Jesse A. Shipp, for many years stage manager for the famous Williams and Walker shows, arranged and directed the tableaux, Allie Ross led the orchestra, composed of fifty musicians, and the choruses were sung by 175 negro men and women.

“NEGROES IN HISTORY.” New York Times, 11 November 1921, p. 13. 

Among the attendees, according to the Times, were James Weldon Johnson, Charles Gilpin and. W. E. B. Du Bois.

– Jonathan Goldman, Nov 10, 2021

TAGS: Black history, African American, education, e