Negro Day
December 26, 1895 was Negro Day at the Expo. Famed African American quilter Harriet Powers also attended this day and met with Irvine Garland Penn, the chief of the Negro Building at the Expo.
The great American band master John Phillip Sousa composed his famous march, King Cotton, for the exposition, and dedicated it to the people of the state of Georgia.
Future politician and historian, Walter McElreath, described it in his memoirs:
The railroad yards were jammed every morning with trains that brought enormous crowds. The streets were crowded all day long. Every conceivable kind of fakir bartered his wares. Dime museums flourished on every street.... Vast stucco hotels stood on Fourteenth Street.... I spent a great deal of time on the streets looking at the strange crowds -- American Indians, Circassians, Hindus, Japanese, and people from every corner of the globe -- who had come as professional midway entertainers or fakirs.
Read more about this topic: Cotton States And International Exposition
Famous quotes containing the words negro and/or day:
“I maintain that I have been a Negro three times—a Negro baby, a Negro girl and a Negro woman. Still, if you have received no clear cut impression of what the Negro in America is like, then you are in the same place with me. There is no The Negro here. Our lives are so diversified, internal attitudes so varied, appearances and capabilities so different, that there is no possible classification so catholic that it will cover us all, except My people! My people!”
—Zora Neale Hurston (1891–1960)
“It will be a great day when our schools get all the money they need and the Air Force has to hold a bake sale to buy a bomber.”
—Advertisement. Poster in a school near Irving Place, New York City (1983)