The American Negro Exposition Poster
*On this date in 1940, The American Negro Exposition opened. Also known as the Black World's Fair and the Diamond Jubilee Exposition, it was a world's fair held in Chicago from July until September 1940 to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the end of slavery in the United States after the American Civil War in 1865.
As a result of the discrimination towards Blacks at the 1933 Century of Progress Exposition, James Washington, a real estate developer, conceived of the American Negro Exposition. On Independence Day, 1940, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, from his Hyde Park home, pressed a button to turn on the lights, officially opening the exposition. The exposition was at the Chicago Coliseum, with 120 exhibits on display. As president, the exposition was organized by James W. Washington and was funded through two $75,000 ($1.37 million in 2020) grants from Congress and the Illinois General Assembly.
Truman Gibson, a member of Roosevelt's "Black Cabinet," served as executive director for the fair. Entrance was 25 cents, and the organizers expected 2 million people to attend. The art exhibit, which Alonzo J. Aden curated, comprised 300 paintings and drawings. The exposition had a replica of the Lincoln Tomb and Monument in Springfield, Ill. Exhibits included representation from most Federal departments and agencies, the city, the Board of Education, and the Republic of Liberia. One section featured the work of Negro authors. Almost every day until closing time on that Labor Day, September 2, had been set aside to honor some State, organization, or Negro.
Additionally, there was a Hall of Fame honoring notable African Americans. Artist William Edouard Scott created a series of 24 murals for the event, which took him three months to complete. Artist Elizabeth Catlett's master thesis, the limestone sculpture "Negro Mother and Child," won first place in the exposition. Margaret Walker entered a literary competition titled 'Who Are You America but Me?' Arna Bontemps and Langston Hughes co-wrote a musical titled Jubilee: Cavalcade of the Negro Theater specifically for the exposition.
Bontemps, the poet Fenton Johnson, and several others working under the auspices of the Illinois Writers' Project produced a commemorative 96-page African American history book called Cavalcade of the American Negro. Other musical segments were a performance by Duke Ellington and his orchestra and a swing performance of The Chimes of Normandy.
