Negro Building

Black Americans in the World of Fairs and Museums

Mabel O. Wilson

• Publisher: University of California Press
• Year: 2023
• Print ISBN:
  9780520268425
• eBook ISBN:
  9780520952492
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Art
• Subtopic: Museum Studies

Focusing on Black Americans' participation in world's fairs, Emancipation expositions, and early Black grassroots museums, Negro Building traces the evolution of Black public history from the Civil War through the civil rights movement of the 1960s. Mabel O. Wilson gives voice to the figures who conceived the curatorial content: Booker T. Washington, W. E. B. Du Bois, Ida B. Wells, A. Philip Randolph, Horace Cayton, and Margaret Burroughs. Originally published in 2012, the book reveals why the Black cities of Chicago and Detroit became the sites of major Black historical museums rather than the nation's capital, which would eventually become home for the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture, which opened in 2016.


Focusing on Black Americans' participation in world's fairs, Emancipation expositions, and early Black grassroots museums, Negro Building traces the evolution of Black public history from the Civil War through the civil rights movement of the 1960s. Mabel

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Figures
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Prologue
• Chapter 1. Progress of a Race: The Black Side’s Contribution to Atlanta’s World’s Fair
• Chapter 2. Exhibiting the American Negro
• Chapter 3. Remembering Emancipation Up North
• Chapter 4. Look Back, March Forward
• Chapter 5. To Make a Black Museum
• Epilogue
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index