Issues at the Fair
While celebrating great American inventions, the Fair also harbored a lot of major issues, including: the exclusion of an African American Building and an assassination that brought the fair to a close.
Fair's refusal to have an African American Building
During the planning of the fair, the fair board refused to allow an African American Building. Many Civil Rights activists protested this refusal including Frederick Douglass, Ida B. Wells, Irvine Garland Penn, and Ferdinand Lee Barnet, who wrote and shared a pamphlet around the fair. The pamphlet was titled "The Reason Why the Colored American is not in the World's Columbian Exposition – The Afro-American's Contribution to Columbian Literature." This highlighted the history of the African American experience since Emancipation and the reasoning behind the exclusion of a dedicated building: Slavery.
Over 10,000 pamphlets were shared around the Fair, coming from the Haitian Embassy, where Douglass was a national representative. Other exhibits featured or were put on by African Americans, but the fair refused to have a dedicated building or exhibit.
Eventually, the fair hosted a specific day where African Americans and other people of color were encouraged to visit. However, no real effort was made to include Black Americans, and the White Americans were the predominant audience, and racist exhibits were still featured.
The Assassination of Mayor Harrison and the End of the Fair
Two days before the closing of the fair, Mayor Carter Harrison III was assassinated by Patrick Eugene Prendergast. Prendergast was a newspaper distributer and during Harrison's campaign for his 5th term, Prendergast lobbied for safety improvements of the Railways Grade Crossings. He believed that if he supported Harrison's campaign then he would be appointed 'Corporation Counsel.'
After Harrison's reelection, and when Prendergast's requests were not met, He showed up at Harrison's house on October 28th, 1893, and shot him three times. Prendergast was caught, tried, and convicted of the assassination of Mayor Harrison. He was executed on July 13th, 1894.
Harrison was a very popular mayor, and with his assassination the Fair's closing ceremonies were cancelled and replaced with a public memorial service.