Mar. 27–29, 2025: World’s Fair Women in “The Mammy Project” (Blue Lake, CA)

Nancy Green and Ida B. Wells, two women who played important and diverse roles in the 1893 World’s Fair, are the subject of a performance by Michelle Matlock playing in Blue Lake, CA, on Mar. 27–29, 2025. The Mammy Project, written and performed by Michelle Matlock, unearths the gritty truth behind the century-old icon of Aunt Jemima. This bandanna-wearing superstar of minstrel shows, Hollywood epics, and the breakfast nook is reimagined from her dark roots in the antebellum South, [...]

By |2025-03-25T15:25:01-05:00March 25th, 2025|Categories: EVENTS|Tags: , , |0 Comments

Nov. 3, 2022–Oct. 28, 2023: “The City Beyond the White City” (Charnley-Persky House Museum, Chicago)

A new exhibition explores the history of race and the built environment in Chicago through archaeology connecting the “White City” of the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition to the material, spatial, and social histories of two 1892 structures—the Charnley-Persky House and the Mecca Flats—located respectively on Chicago’s privileged Near North and disinvested Near South Sides. The City Beyond the White City: Race, Two Chicago Homes, and their Neighborhoods, sponsored by the Charnley-Persky House Museum Foundation and Society of Architectural Historians [...]

By |2023-11-05T17:55:16-06:00November 19th, 2022|Categories: EVENTS (past), EXHIBITS (past)|Tags: , , |0 Comments

Remembering Nancy Green, Aunt Jemima, and the 1893 World’s Fair

Though relatively unknown at the time, one participant in the 1893 World’s Fair later became a famous fixture of food advertising and a part of many people’s kitchens for more than a century. For the past ninety-seven years, the final resting place of the real woman behind the character was an unmarked plot of grass in a cemetery on Chicago’s South Side. A sign welcoming guests to the September 5, 2020, headstone ceremony for Nancy Green. On [...]

By |2024-01-15T07:42:58-06:00September 9th, 2020|Categories: HISTORY|Tags: , , , |2 Comments
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