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N.C. Colored State Fair

Photo: ID: H-124
Marker Title: N.C. COLORED STATE FAIR
Location: 2600 block of Hillsborough Street in Raleigh
County: Wake
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Did you know there was a Colored State Fair in NC?
This was created because we were not allowed to participate in the NC State Fair which was also called, the White people's fair.

Photo: ID: H-124
Marker Title: N.C. COLORED STATE FAIR
Location: 2600 block of Hillsborough Street in Raleigh
County: Wake
-----
Did you know there was a Colored State Fair in NC?
This was created because we were not allowed to participate in the NC State Fair which was also called, the White people's fair.
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The first North Carolina Colored State Fair opened in Raleigh on November 18, 1879. The fair was model behind the 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. They also wanted to demonstrate what newly freed people could accomplish.
One of the founders of the association was Charles N. Hunter. Hunter was a former slave and a politically-prominent black educator in Raleigh. As public school teacher, journalist, and historian, Hunter devoted his long life to improving opportunities for blacks. 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.

Usually held in November, the fair combined agricultural and industrial displays with contests for exhibitors. Parades and speeches featuring politicians and other prominent people took place throughout the days of the fair. The fair was held on the original grounds of the Agricultural Society; the Negro State Fair was similar in format but on a smaller scale. The fair quickly became a social occasion for African Americans and they looked forward to attending it each year. The fair association received a small legislative appropriation. Hunter fought to keep the fair viable, but it was never a large moneymaker, because African Americans just didn’t have the money it took to make it a profitable event. The last fair took place in 1930, under the direction of Hunter. Prior to Hunter’s death, plans for the 1931 fair were underway, however when Hunter died in September of that year the planning ceased.
Source:https://blackthen.com/charles-n-hunter-founded-the-first.../
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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 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 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 regular state fair for another eighteen years.

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-12474

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