Race in Popular Culture: The St. Louis World's Fair of 1904
This lesson outline engages students in a detailed examination of the St. Louis World's Fair of 1904, during which American's fears of "the other" and misinterpretations of the concept of "race" were exploited for public entertainment and education. This outline features an extensive collection of primary source images of the Fair, and references many readings from Race and Membership in American History: The Eugenics Movement.
Students will
- Critically view and analyze visual images that deal with issues of race, class, and gender.
- Better understand the role mass entertainment plays in embedding notions of race and "the other" in the minds of the general public.
- Apply a variety of historical thinking skills in the analysis of primary source documents, such as: assessing credibility of source material, determining point of view, relevance of historical context, and making sophisticated comparisons and distinctions between the particular historical moment and issues today.
- Develop a more nuanced view of how the topic of Social Darwinism in American History can be understood within the fabric of American social life.
2- 4 class periods
The historical setting of the St. Louis World's Fair came at a pivotal time in American history. So much of American society was in the throes of social change. The hopes and anxieties around this change were reflected in the fair.
- Particularly relevant for this lesson was the entrenchment of Jim Crow in the wider society and the attempt by the fair organizers to justify its practice in a democracy.
- The establishment of an American imperial presence in the world through the acquisition of colonies in the Philippines and Cuba was paramount in how different cultures were represented at the fair
- Industrial growth was reflected in a particular way that masks the social and economic problems the United States was experiencing at the time.
Besides the readings already mentioned in Race and Membership: The Eugenics Movement and Holocaust and Human Behavior the following resources are particularly helpful for this lesson.
Supplementary Books for Background Reading for the Teacher:
- Baker, Lee From Savage to Negro: Anthropology and the Construction of Race, 1896-1954 Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999 (Chapter 3, "Anthropology in American Popular Culture")
- Bradford, Phillips Verner Ota Benga: The Pygmy in the Zoo New York: Dell, 1993
- Breitbart, Eric A World on Display: Photographs from the St. Louis World's Fairs Albuquerque, N.M.: University of New Mexico Press, 1997.
- Clevenger, Martha Indescribably Grand: Diaries and Letters from the 1904 World's Fairs St. Louis: Missouri Historical Society Press, 1996.
- Kline, Wendy Building a Better Race University of California Press, 2001
- Rydell, Robert All the World is a Fair Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987 (Chapter 6, "The Louisiana Purchase Exposition,1904: ‘The Coronation of Civilization'")
- Rydell, Robert World of Fairs Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993
Videos:
For more information on these videos and how to obtain copies, visit the Facing History Lending Library.
Websites:
- The 1904 World's Fair; Looking Backward/Looking Forward
- World's Fairs and Expositions: Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St.Louis
Primary Source Documents & Lesson Notes
The following activity draws extensively on a collection of primary source documents linked throughout this lesson outline. Teachers should read Lesson Notes for further information and guidance on using the materials in this lesson outline.
1. Begin the lesson by adapting the "Introduction" and the "David Francis/William McGee" story from the attached lesson notes. The Introduction frames the activity with two essential questions:
- What happens when notions of the "other" are created in the name of education?
- What role does entertainment and mass marketing play in embedding these ideas in popular culture?
The story provides an entry point for drawing the students into the activity. More detail on David Francis and William McGee can be found in the cited chapters of Lee Baker's and Robert Rydell's books in Supplementary Books for Background Reading for the Teacher.
2. Provide students with the first visual images of the fair. Below are links to several introductory images. These images can be used in conjunction with important background information found in "Background to World Fairs" and "Historical Context of the St. Louis World's Fair."
3. After establishing an introductory context, introduce students to the more detailed images of the Fair. These provide a copy of the ground plan and some of the prominent buildings at the fair. Ask students what strikes them about the ground plan and buildings. As you record their remarks on chart paper or the board, add some of the relevant information and statistics found in "The Fair Grounds" section of the Lesson Notes.
- Ground Plan of the Fair
- Cascades and the Grand Basin
- Palace of Transportation
- The Sunken Garden
- Lithograph of the Fair
- Festival Hall & Cascades
4. At this point, the activity has been very teacher centered. Students have gained some important background information and have had their curiosity whetted with the first images of the fair which are impressive even to the 21st century eye. Now they are about to enter into the heart of the activity where they deconstruct the messages of the fair in small working groups.
5. Ask students in their small groups to consider these two questions:
- If this fair was billed as "the university of the masses," what would a fairgoer be learning from these images?
- What questions are raised from these images? (They can be historical, ethical, human behavior related, technical, etc.)
The questions are deceptively simple but contain many levels for exploration. Students do not have to reach agreement on all of their responses to the two questions, but you want to make sure each of their voices are heard. Responses should be recorded on chart paper. Students should have about 15-20 minutes in small groups to complete the exercise.
6. Have the groups post their chart paper on the walls and let students walk around and view other group responses. Make sure each group has assigned someone to report out for the group. That person or persons walk the class through their responses and why they chose their comments. The rest of the class can ask clarifying questions but not debate the other group's findings.
7. As the groups are reporting, try to pick up on patterns that are emerging in their comments. Summarize some of these strands when the groups are finished.
8. Show a short clip from the video, A World on Display. This is near the end of the film and show cases short testimonies from former fairgoers and historians. Students journal their responses to what they find most revealing about what fairgoers remembered.
9. Finally, there is the postscript. This is the last section of Lesson Notes. It tells of the story of Ota Benga and what happened to him after the fair. Also, there is the note that since the St. Louis Exposition, fairs in the United States will have more explicit eugenic themes in their exhibitions, calling for the sterilization or immigration restriction of inferior races and individuals. The St. Louis Fair suggested inferior races would die off on their own and in this sense evoked more of Social Darwinian theme than a eugenic message.
1. There is no one activity that is best here. The activity enriches other readings in Chapter 4 of Race and Membership in American History: The Eugenics Movement. This is especially true for readings referring to lynching. It provides some insight into how people can view extreme brutality to another human being as a form of entertainment or socially sanctioned behavior.
2. This lesson can be referred to repeatedly through the rest of a unit on eugenics. When a class examines the fitter family contests, the St. Louis Fair can be seen as direct antecedent. This also applies to textbook images of other races both in American and German texts in the 1920's and 30's. To view images from the fitter family contests as well as other American Eugenics propaganda images go to Facing History's Eugenics Online Module.
Alan Stoskopf, Northeastern UniversityIn a sense the assessments suggested below are follow up activities in their own right. They allow for sophisticated analogies to issues in today's society.
1. Ask students to draw a ground plan for a fair they would create which would highlight cultures from around the world. How would they both entertain and educate? How would they do this in a way that conveyed respect and understanding for human differences? The criteria for evaluation would be in the rationale they offered for their fair, such as which exhibits should be chosen, how would they be displayed, what kinds of technology to be used, and what would the goals of the fair be. Students would need to refer to the 1904 fair consistently in the explanation of their design.
2. In 2004 St. Louis is planning to commemorate the 1904 fair. If your students were consultants, what would they suggest to the new fair committee? Ask students to refer to what they learned in this lesson and incorporate insights from their small and large group discussions.
3. Students could critique an existing fair or display dealing with human differences in some way. This could be either on an actual physical site, such as Disney World or Colonial Williamsburg or in a virtual setting on the Internet. Criteria for evaluation could include how they used notes from the lesson activity in their critiques and how sophisticated their analogies were between present day phenomena and the 1904 fair.
