A Fair for Intersectional Reconciliation

The aftermath of the Civil War weighed heavily in the 1876 Centennial celebrations. An explicit purpose of the Centennial Exposition was postbellum reconciliation of the former belligerents. The Exposition took place at the very moment southern white “redeemers” were completing their seizure of state legislatures in the name of white supremacy, an activity that the Exposition’s leaders chose to ignore. Accordingly, black people were excluded from the Exposition’s vision of “The Union One and Indivisible.”