Ida B. Wells, ed., Preface, The Reason Why the Colored American Is Not in the World's Columbian Exposition (Chicago: Ida B. Wells, 1893).
Introduction

The Reason Why the Colored American Is Not in the World's Columbian Exposition is the 81-page masterpiece published and largely written by Ida B. Wells (1862-1931) in 1893. The pamphlet consists of six chapters, with portions written by such notable individuals as the antislavery giant Frederick Douglass, journalist and editor I. Garland Penn, and Ferdinand L. Barnett, whom Wells would marry in 1895.[15] Wells had originally planned to publish the pamphlet in English, French, German, and Spanish; however, financial constraints limited her to publication of the pamphlet in English, with the preface also translated into French and German. A detailed, impassioned account of discrimination against blacks in the post-Reconstruction years, The Reason Why was published with $500 that Wells raised by speaking at Chicago's black churches.[16]


The radical stance of Wells's pamphlet can be seen in the responses to it. Many black newpaper editors around the nation condemned it, predicting that it would do more harm than good. From their perspective, rather than protesting against discrimination and Southern lynch law, African Americans would advance their cause better by attending the Exposition. They would thereby show vistors (native and foreign alike) how the African American community had progressed in the three decades since Emancipation. But Wells, having just returned from a lecture tour in England, felt it important to inform Americans of the terrors of Lynch law. Historian Ann Massa has termed the pamphlet a "militant black symposium."[17] Wells's pamphlet told the bloody truth about lynching, taking advantage of the opportunity presented by the Exposition to bring the issue to the attention of visitors.


THE REASON WHY


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The Colored American is not

in the World's Columbian Exposition.


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The Afro-American's Contribution to Columbian Literature


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Copies sent to any address on receipt of three cents for postage.

Address MISS IDA B. WELLS,

128 S. Clark Street, Chicago, Ill., U.S.A.


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PREFACE.

TO THE SEEKER AFTER TRUTH: [A]

Columbia has bidden the civilized world to join with her in celebrating the four-hundredth anniversary of the discovery of America and the invitation has been accepted. At Jackson Park are displayed exhibits of her natural resources, and her progress in the arts and sciences, but that which would best illustrate her moral grandeur has been ignored.

The exhibit of the progress made by a race in 25 years of freedom as against 250 years of slavery, would have been the greatest tribute to the greatness and progressiveness of American institutions which could have been shown the world. The colored people of this great Republic number eight millions--more than one-tenth the whole population of the United States. They were among the earliest settlers of this continent, landing at Jamestown, Virginia in 1619 in a slave ship, before the Puritans, who landed at Plymouth in 1620. They have contributed a large share to American prosperity and civilization. The labor of one-half of this country, has always been, and is still being done by them. The first credit this country had in its commerce with foreign nations was created by productions resulting from their labor. The wealth created by their industry has afforded to the white people of this country the leisure essential to their great progress in education, art, science, industry and invention.

Those visitors to the World's Columbian Exposition who know these facts, especially foreigners will naturally ask: Why are not the colored people, who constitute so large an element of the American population, and who have contributed so large a share to American greatness,--more visibly present and better represented in this World's Exposition? Why are they not taking part in this glorious celebration of the four-hundredth anniversary of the discovery of their country? Are they so dull and stupid as to feel no interest in this great event? It is to answer these questions and supply as far as possible our lack of representation at the Exposition that the Afro-American has published this volume.