The Negro Buildings

Chapter 2 examines the creation of and role played by the Negro Buildings at the Atlanta and Nashville fairs. These African American–run buildings gave southern black professionals and clerics an opportunity to voice their own story of the South’s past, present, and future. The buildings presented an image of a “New Negro” who was well versed in the modern techniques of industry and agriculture. The Negro Building exhibits presented black southerners as a progressive and future-oriented people who challenged much of the evolutionary thinking and racial science of the late nineteenth century. At the same time, the Negro Buildings make clear the ways some African American leaders embraced the language of progress and civilization to accommodate white southern society.

Archaeology · Atlanta · Civilization · Environmental ethics · Metropolitan area · Political science · Sociology · White (mutation) · History · Race, History, and American Society