Mabel O. Wilson is the Nancy and George Rupp Professor of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, a Professor in African American and African Diasporic Studies, and the Associate Director of the Institute for Research in African American Studies (IRAAS) at Columbia University.

• List of Figures Acknowledgments Introduction Prologue 1. Progress of a Race:The Black Side’s Contribution to Atlanta’s World’s Fair 2. Exhibiting the American Negro 3. Remembering Emancipation Up North 4. Look Back, March Forward 5. To Make a Black Museum Epilogue Notes Bibliography Index

"This is a fascinating, sharply analyzed, and well-writ ten account of the evolution of black leaders' efforts to use public forums to define and disseminate African American history and identity on their own terms, as well as to insert African Americans into broader narratives and ideologies of American and/or pan-African history. Of particular note is the value of Wilson's interdisciplinary approach, which brings together methods and insights from fields ranging from art history to architecture, visual culture, and urban studies. By conceptualizing these social spaces as an extension of a black counterpublic sphere, where African Americans could formulate, debate, and articulate ideologies of race and nation that ran counter to white discourse, Wilson helps to place these venues within the broader political context of their time."