The 1904 Anthropology Days and Olympic Games: Sport, Race, and American Imperialism

Chapter 1. A "Special Olympics"

59 A spectacle indeed extraordinary and rare in the records of human experience. President Francis, The Universal Exposition of 1904 The date: August 11–12, 1904. The place: St Louis, Missouri. The venue: The Louisiana Purchase Exposition (lpe). The special event: Anthropology Days. Basilio, a Negrito from the Philippines, has just won a heat of the pole climbing competition and been awarded an American flag. Basilio was one of almost three thousand indigenous men and women from all over the world who came to St. Louis to serve as demonstrators, educators, research subjects, and entertainers. Many agreed to participate in athletic competitions and demonstrations of physical ability during the fair’s eight-month tenure. On this hot, humid day in August, over a hundred men performed in the Special Olympics’ contests of spear and baseball throwing, shot put, running, broad jumping, weight lifting, pole climbing, and tugs-of-war before a crowd of approximately ten thousand. The “Special Olympics”—or Anthropology Days—is a little-known chapter in the history of anthropology and its relations with indigenous peoples Chapter 1. A “Special Olympics” nancy j. parezo Testing Racial Strength and Endurance at the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition parezo 60 who constituted the field’s subject matter in the early twentieth century. It constitutes an example of how cultural and physical anthropology were combined by the first president of the American Anthropological Association and head of the lpe Anthropology Department, William J McGee, in order to present to the American public examples of the “many long chapters of human evolution” that he had assembled to represent the world’s races and cultural types at the St. Louis World’s Fair and to demonstrate that his department was producing invaluable new empirical knowledge during the exposition.1 The lpe’s Special Olympics is also an instance of how James E. Sullivan, head of the Department of Physical Culture and a major proponent of physical education, was determined to demonstrate that American athletes were the best in the world, superior to all other races and cultures. In this paper I relate the story of how this Special Olympics was conceptualized and quickly became a comedy in bad science through the use of a badly flawed anthropometry methodology to prove central premises of social Darwinian and unilinear evolutionary paradigms. In addition, I demonstrate how the results of these athletic events were transformed into so-called scientific conclusions about the superiority or inferiority of different groups of peoples that were transmitted to the press and accepted by countless Americans, reinforcing their preconceptions. In short, I theorize about both the dynamics and structures that led to Anthropology Days being conducted using a rigged protocol ensuring that “primitives” failed and Caucasians were “scientifically proven” to be the superior race. In order to understand these unique anthropological and physical culture events, they must be contextualized into the world of early-twentieth-century anthropology, physical culture, and international expositions. Like other international fairs of this period, the lpe was designed to be a universal mecca for the display and dissemination of knowledge about the peoples of the world, their origins, and technological accomplishments.2 This information was intended to serve as both the “before advancement” picture and as the foil for technological, industrial, and social changes lauded as progress, A “Special Olympics” 61 the hallmark of the early twentieth century. These fairs were also tools by which imperialist countries and the business class justified and essentially celebrated capitalism, imperialism, forced assimilation, and the subjugation and dispossession of indigenous peoples worldwide and the exploitation of their natural and cultural resources. Anthropology was a new discipline during the exposition period, attempting to claim its place in the academy and a professional status. To accomplish this, anthropology had to prove to the general public that it had specialized and esoteric knowledge that was useful and necessary. One place it did this was at international expositions, using a special brand of anthropology that I call “exposition anthropology.” Exposition anthropology is intimately connected with museum anthropology and involves a basic concern with categorizing and disseminating anthropological concepts and principles so that they are understood by the general public, who will hopefully see that the discipline is a practical science on the same level as chemistry, physics, biology, and medicine. Static and interactive anthropology exhibits at the international expositions held between 1851 and 1915 were deliberately designed to educate viewers...