Barrier Williams’ portrait painting continued to improve over the years and received gallery recognition. She earned the opportunity to exhibit her works at the 1884-85 World’s Industrial and Cotton Centennial Exposition held in New Orleans. Scholar of the New Orleans World Fair Mikki Pfeffer writes, “Women of color who originally wished to show with
their gender, instead exhibited with their ‘race’ in the Colored Department, the first such space offered to people of color at a world’s fair. Women of color faced additional challenges by being twice removed” (6). Julia Ward Howe, a well-known aristocratic white woman, was chosen to lead the Woman’s Department of the fair. She kept a journal throughout her time preparing and administering over the department and noted in the journal after meeting with the Colored Ladies Exposition Association representatives that she would attempt to help them find a suitable location for their displays, insinuating that they might be included with white women in the Women’s Department. However, the request was not mentioned again in any writing from the period, and Black women were excluded from the Women’s Department. Barrier Williams’ art and other Black women’s submissions were displayed in the Colored Department.
Description and layout of the New Orleans World’s Fair of 1884
The Horticultural Hall at the New Orleans World’s Fair
Barrier Williams’ artwork exhibited at the World’s Fair was recognized and reported on by national publications. According to Mrs. N.F. Mossell, “At the New Orleans Exposition some years ago her pieces on exhibition were the theme of many favorable criticisms by visiting artists” (Deegan 127). Barrier Williams’ pieces received much acclaim in Black newspapers as well. For example, The Washington Bee described the ladies
at the fair: There is a decidedly local feeling here among the ladies, favorable to the picture of Gov. Pinchback, executed in crayon by Miss Fannie Barrier, of your city, as against that of Supt. Cook, executed by Miss Ada Hand, also of Washington. Our girls declare that the work of Miss Barrier is far superior to that of Miss Hand, and in the matter of subject they are equally positive in asserting that Gov. Pinchback, excels in manly beauty. The former looks every inch the man, while the latter has a conceited, selfish appearance which destroys manliness. (The Washington Bee) Another newspaper, The Times-Democrat of New Orleans, described Barrier Williams’ work in specific: “Then the work of Miss Fanny Barrier, a public-school teacher of Washington. It will be seen upon examination that Miss Barrier has marked talent. She has a good number of exhibits of various styles of work. She has had superior advantages in art schools it was learned, and whether or not, she must have had a certain degree of native talent” (The Times-Democrat).
Leaders of future World’s Fairs would make note of the success of the Colored Department at the New Orleans fair to encourage the sort of Black participation and international recognition that could have a lasting impact on race relations. However, Pfeffer writes, “Jim Crow lurked just beyond this brief moment in late-nineteenth-century New Orleans. The rigid laws of the 1890s halted the trajectory these participants assumed they had begun in 1884” (460). Although the Fair was a momentous occasion for the Black liberation movement, that progress was halted by racial segregation laws, which were already being discussed at the time of the Fair. Through their participation in the Colored Department at the Cotton Centennial in 1884-1885, African Americans legitimized their competence and their identity. Pfeffer writes, “Although the words of one speaker at opening day did not come to pass that in the future ‘we shall know no North, no South, no East, no West, no white, no Black,’ working together did foster racial pride and personal power to a remarkable degree during the precarious transition between Reconstruction and Jim Crow (442-462). While movements towards racial and gender equality were impeded by Jim Crow laws, the Fair provided a space in which Black Americans could empower themselves through the display of works honoring their history and culture beyond enslavement.
Main Building at New Orleans World’s Fair