The North Carolina Colored State Fair
Operated 1879-1930 by The N.C. Industrial Assoc. to accommodate state's Black citizens because of the State of North Carolina's enforcement of segregation laws.
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On November 18, 1879, the first North Carolina Colored State Fair opened in Raleigh. The Colored Industrial Association of North Carolina wanted to showcase the progress made by African Americans after Emancipation. The fair was based on the successful model of the State Fair held by the State Agricultural Society since the 1850s.
Top image: Engraving title: "The procession passing down Fayetteville Street, on the way to the grounds"
Drawing by Joseph Becker,. "North Carolina—First Grand Fair of the North Carolina (Colored) Industrial Association, Held at Raleigh, November 17th, 18th, 19th and 20th." Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper. December 6, 1879
Source: NC Archives .
Bottom photograph: Henry Ford, L. Wood and another young man judging at the North Carolina Colored State Fair run by the North Carolina Industrial Association, 1920.
Source: S. B. Simmons Collection (ncatsbs), Archives and Special Collections, F. D. Bluford Library, North Carolina A&T State University.
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The fair was modeled behind the segregate white NC State Fair held by the State Agricultural Society since the 1850s. In 1879, twenty-two men organized the Colored Industrial Association of North Carolina.
Their stated purpose was to improve and educate North Carolina’s African Americans and to demonstrate what newly freed people could accomplish.
One of the founders of the association was Charles N. Hunter. Hunter was formerly enslaved and became a politically-prominent Black educator in Raleigh. As a public school teacher, journalist, and historian, Hunter devoted his long life to improving opportunities for the Black population who were forced to live under Jjim Crow laws. Also, as an activist Hunter would often skillfully use his journalistic abilities and his personal contacts with whites to publicize the problems and progress of the African American race.
Founded by brothers Charles Hunter and Osborne Hunter and a few associates in early 1879, the North Carolina Industrial Association (NCIA) sought to “encourage and promote the development of the industrial and educational resources of the colored people of North Carolina . . . .”
Their initiatives toward this end included an annual exhibition—the Negro State Fair—“to place before the world every evidence of our progress as a race which it is possible to secure.”
The NCIA’s founders called upon black professionals from every walk of life—farmers, mechanics, artisans, and educators, to name a few—to attend the fair and place on exhibit “their best productions.”
Over the course of its fifty-one-year history, the fair welcomed notable and influential speakers and guests from across the nation, including Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington, John Mercer Langston, and Maggie L. Walker. Toward the end of the fair’s run, the NCIA encountered difficulties in obtaining use of the state fairgrounds from the white leadership.
No fair was held in 1926, 1927, and 1929 due to the association’s inability to secure an alternate site, and as a result, state appropriations were withdrawn. The state, however, assisted in the acquisition and funding of a permanent fair for white citizens of North Carolina about this same time.
The Colored State Fair was convened in 1930, but the General Assembly’s refusal to reinstate the annual appropriations and the death of the fair’s chief supporter, Charles Hunter, in 1931 brought about its permanent demise. Despite the loss of their fair, Black North Carolinians remained barred from attending the white North Carolina state fair for another eighteen years until 1965.
References:
Melton A. McLaurin, The North Carolina State Fair: The First 150 Years (2003)
John N. Haley, Charles N. Hunter and Race Relations in North Carolina (1987)
Robert C. Kenzer, Enterprising Southerners: Black Economic Success in North Carolina, 1865-1915 (1997)
Source: http://www.ncmarkers.com/Markers.aspx?MarkerId=H-124
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Other sources:
Charles Hunter: https://www.irememberourhistory.org/education/charles-norfleet-hunter
Fredrick Douglass and the NC Industrial Association Fair- NC State Libraries Blog post: