In honor of Black History Month WGN-TV aired a new half-hour documentary show titled “Hidden History” that included a segment on the experience of African Americans at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition.

WGN News anchor Micah Materre opened the six-minute segment reminding viewers that “African Americans have a long and storied history in Chicago,” with one important moment of African Americans influence on the world taking place in and around the 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago’s Jackson Park. Historian Kay James McCrimon details some of the “hidden history” of how officials systematic excluded African Americans from exhibiting at the fair. In response came a pamphlet of protest by journalist and civil rights activist Ida B. Wells, with Ferdinand Lee Barnett, abolitionist Frederick Douglass, and journalist Irvine Garland Penn. Michelle Duster, great-granddaughter of Wells, highlights notable inventions and publications that offer a sharp contrast to some of the racial stereotypes and ugly caricatures depicted in the white press. The legacy of black imagery in advertising, such as those used for Aunt Jemima and Cream of Wheat breakfast cereals, has roots at the Fair. The segment concludes with a description of “Colored American Day” on August 25, 1893, organized by officials of the Exposition and prompting very different responses from Wells and Douglass.

“Hidden History” aired on WGN-TV on February 18 and February 23, 2020. A streaming video of the show is available here.

Few African Americans were hired as workers at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition, but Mr. A. S. Johnson held an important post at the Ferris Wheel. [Image from Pictorial Album and History of the World’s Fair and Midway. Harry T. Smith & Co., 1893.]