DGHM 110: Introduction to Digital Humanities

50 Years' Progress of Negro is Shown_Brooklyn Eagle_1913

Article in two section. Title of the article is "50 Years' Progress of Negro is Shown/Emancipation Exposition in Manhattan, Monument to Race Advacement./Exhibits Trace Each Epock./ Half of Great Opening Throng White Persons - Industrial Pace Rapid." Article is as follows: "In celebration of the fifty years of progress of the race since Lincoln freed the slaves in 1863, every phase of present-day negro activity is now being exhibited at the Twelfth Regiment Armonry, at Sixty-second street and Columbus avenue, Manhattan, through the National Emancipation Exposition. Well-known colored man have planned the exposition to show just what the negro has done and is doing, and the exhibits have been assembled in such a manner as to be of general interest. More that 3,000 persons were present at the opening of the exposition yesterday, and more than half of them were white people. Visitors from the white race are expected to be in the majority during the days that the exposition continues, as there has never been perviously an opportunity to see son concrete an illustration of the history of the colored race. The exposition is to be open daily, both afternoon and evening, until October 31, and there are to be features every day. The chief of these, the 'Historical Pageant of the Colored Race,' is to be given this evening. There are 250 actors in the production, which was written by W. E. B. Du Bois, and an orchestra and chorus assist in the presentation. There is also to be a drill by a regiment of Boy Scouts, under the command of Major R. C. Wendell, this evening. The exhibits presented at the exposition show the educational and industrial progress of the colored race since its history began. They have been so arranged as to trace the various epochs of development and have been given an excellent setting in artistically decorated booths. The attractive arrangements is in itself an illustration of what negroes are doing for advancement. The most striking feature of the exposition is the Egyptian Art Temple, which has been erected in the center of the armory, after a design by Nicholas Brown. It houses the exhibition of paintings, sculpture and other works of art that have been executed exclusively by colored people. A rather unusual piece of work is an eight-foot group, "Humanity Freeing the Slave," by Mrs. Meta Warrick Fuller, who was educated in the School of Industrial Arts in Philadelphia and who studied under Rodin in Paris for three years. One of the booths is in charge of the Howard Colored Orphan Asylum, of Brooklyn, and shows the kind of crops that are being raised at the asylum farm on Long Island. There are four cabbages that weigh eighty-four pounds, and it is claimed that they are the largest ever produced. The great increase in the negro population of the United States and negro population of the world are shown at booths at which dry statistics are brought home through various interactive devices. It is shown that where there were 757,203 negroes in the United States in 1790, there are now 11,850,775 besides about four and a half million mulattoes. The negro population of Brooklyn is given at 31,200 as against 1,790 in 1790. According to the figures, there is a total of 960,000,000 colored people in the world. There are exhibits of negro industrial work o, twpical[sic.] negro homes, of books written by colored authors, and a score of similar branches of activity. At one booth there are hundreds of pictures of great mansions that are owned by negroes, and at another there are records of the thousands of patents taken out by negroes. The committee in charge of the exposition is made up of R. M. Woods, chairman; C. Carr, vice chairman; L. Morton, secretary; J. H. Anedrson, Professor W. E. Dubois, the Rev. W. Simms, Dr. Byrd and Dr. Hillery."

Brooklyn Eagle

October 23, 1913

Brooklyn, NY

Eph1.41.121
Ater, 161, n. 73
Race and Reunion, page 375