Thank you for being here. [applause] mark hi, margaret. Margaret hi, mark. Mark great to see such a turnout. I really liked your book. Bestught it was one of the works of history. As great works of history do they make history really come , alive. It is one of those rare books that does just that. Many people know about the book that talked about the exhibition, the city, a very prosperous city. Your book is the first fulllength book that focuses specifically on the history of one of the great events that happen in buffalo. Worlds fairs were once major events in the United States. That is no longer the case. Buffalo was one of 15 cities to ever host a worlds fair in the United States. 1984 int happened since new orleans. The next one is going to be anyone know . Probably not. It will be in because asked on. The United States is not slated to participate in that worlds fair. This occurred during what was called the grand era of worlds fairs. It was a big deal for buffalo. Margaret, talk about that. What did it mean for buffalo at that time to host a worlds fair. Margaret great question. Tion let me first thank leslie. So buffalo was a big deal at the turnofthecentury. We are seeing that same type of optimism now, but it was very proud of its accomplishments and its stateoftheart architecture, the finest asphalt streets in the country, electric streetcars, electric lights. It was big, 300 50,000 people at the turnofthecentury. It had fathered two president s and it had big dreams. One of the things that hope to do was to become bigger and raise its profile, so one of the ways that cities do this is to host a huge exposition, and buffalo had big ideas that its panamerican exhibition would be even more grand than the world infair that took place chicago in 1893. Mark electricity was still new and played a big part. Can you talk about how dazzling the affair looked at night . The electric tower was one of the signature buildings of the exposition and the affair really was all about electricity in many ways. It celebrated its command over the natural world, represented by Niagara Falls. We had giant transformers set up on the ground to bring electric current into the fair and eliminate illuminate the ground. The big event was the elimination that took place aery night and people were wed by this. They tried to work their way close to see what were initially little pinpricks of light, and blossom into a beautiful yellow and orange glow that brought the whole fairgrounds alive. This is one of the biggest hits of the fair. Colors, howoice of the colors were used told a big story. Can you share that . Margaret the affair was all about pride in western and white civilization. The fair directors wanted to convey a message about how people had moved, particularly the United States, from a position of savagery to kind of the apex of civilization. Messagenslated this into the colors of the fair. And you entered on the periphery of the grounds, you would be entering at places where buildings were tinted more red and orange and yellow. That represented the more barbaric races and as you moved toward the electric tower, the tint of the building grew more and more pale and faded, and then you reached the signature building, the electric tower, which was painted in yellow and white. Difficult for people to understand the allegory here about race. Mark in the same way color was used in a racial way, people of color were portrayed in a particularly kind of animes in the disturbing way. There were signs of conquest. Verywhere in the fair there was the Darkest Africa exhibit with the old plantation. The way native americans were depicted, including geronimo, who i believe was on loan from a state prison in oklahoma. Now, it isse stories really shocking. Margaret it is distressing. We have to remember that this of the era of jim crow, course the era of segregation and lynching. It shouldnt be surprising as we look back and see how the fair officials put this together. Supremacy,ry about particularly race supremacy. They conveyed their notions about this through exhibits, like the old plantation, which brought in africanamerican performers to enact the socalled good old days before the civil war, and these were performers who picked cotton and sang and danced. Mark this was for decades after the civil war, yet this was still happening in the United States. Margaret thats right. This is post reconstruction when there had been a reconciliation between the white south and north, which placed africanamericans in a position of struggle and challenge. Else thatthing people, when they read your book, will be thrown for a loop has to do with animal welfare. There are a couple of events that were very shocking. One in the book tells of the public execution or at least the planned public execution of an elephant. The first jumbo was a very beloved animal that was paraded around the country. Margaret very popular. Mark the second incident concerned the mass slaughter of dogs that occurred at the exposition, which people were paying extra tickets to witness. Tell us a little about those events. Margaret lets start with the dogs. I would say this is one of the most shocking things i came that in buffalo shelters and parks, dogs were rounded up, poodles, terriers, cross breeds. Rounded up and then brought to the fair, where they were killed, and then the native peoples of the fair ate those dogs in a dog feast. Buffalone society in was very percussive very progressive. They were very distressed by this come about the same time, they wanted to acknowledge the cultural traditions of the native performers, who helped orchestrate this, so they didnt want to interfere. Event,a very troubling but it was also an event that kind of revealed the cultural tensions and challenges of this fair. Mark there were some positive aspect about the fair in their depictions of people not from the United States. Particularly the presentation of latin american countries. There was the panamerican exposition. From your book, it sounded like latin american countries have gotten short shrift in previous world fairs. Not the case in buffalo. Margaret thats right. I think one thing that buffalo should be proudest of in terms the way thatwas they invited latin american republics to be part of this exposition. They were very much involved in helping to govern cuba. Cuban dignitaries came to buffalo and said, we would prefer if the United States would give us our complete freedom, and so, the fair gave inse countries exhibit space which they could show off their accomplishments, their art, their educational products, et cetera, but it also gave them a way to talk back, to rebut American Foreign policy, which i think is pretty interesting. You people the book with many fascinating characters. If you dont mind, we can take them one at a time. I think everyone is familiar nameleon, the person whose is usually followed with a word anarchist. He was the assassin from cleveland of William Mckinley at the temple of music. You have a lot to say about him. He is quite an unusual guy. Margaret he is an unusual guy. Was to i frame the story talk a little bit about his desire to be in anarchist. I am not sure the anarchist community embraced him. Certainly after the assassination, they tried to distance themselves. To also talk about his mental illness. He clearly, in my mind, was a sick man. Gave a number of short speeches about how he was driven and motivated by being unemployed and unable to get access to hospitals, physicians, health care. We dont want to have much sympathy, because he did terrible things, but he brought up issues that are real issues and they continue to be something we discussed. I never say his name right. You said a little differently. Margaret in buffalo, the paper is came out and said it was gus, yet i aml reading other interpretations that say it is chogus. Perhaps we have people here that can help us pronounce this name. Mark he is at the temple of music with a revolver in his hand waiting to kill the president. There is someone else in line slave. Im parker, an ex to shake hands with the president. Instead, he corralled him to the ground and is celebrated as a black man who got the guy that shot the president and later, something happens and history is turned on its head. Effects onrtunate the arrest of mr. Parkers life. Margaret jim parker, as you the assassinackle and was recognized as one of the heroes of the moment because he from firingolgosz another round. For the next eight days, he was seen as the hero who might have saved mckinleys life, but after ,e was hailed as this savior you got the secret service and other individuals there to guard the president coming out and saying, we certainly did our job. That man was not really there at all, then in the trial of czolgosz , James Parkers testimony was never called for, and he disappeared, or he was edited out and erased from the memory of the event. He went around the country for pretty much the rest of his life talking on street corners, meeting people in various churches and so forth talking about the role he had played, egging people to believe and eventually died in philadelphia, found on the street and destitute. Tragic. One of the person in your book you write about was only two feet tall. Alice chiquita. Margaret chiquita is one of my favorite characters, and theyre all nonfiction they are real people but she was born in guadalajara nd she was about 24, 26 inches tall and was discovered by a showman named Frank Bostock when he was living in new york and was brought to the fair as one of the highlights of the midway and of themed her the mascot exposition. That is interesting because and redefined her as a cuban instead of mexican and the fact that she was a mascot as the relationship with cuba. You know, uncle sam, the protector of this Little Island nation. So she became a celebrated individual. She was not treated very well by her manager and she left very suddenly at one point late in the exposition. Rune the story but it was quite a dramatic departure. A lot of people are familiar with annies story. The first woman to go over barreling and in a she survived. She looked to capitalize on that and had a bad experience and that never happened, did it . Margaret poor annie taylor. She decided she would make money in her later life but going over the falls and being the first descent. Survive the again, i dont want to spoil things but i guess ill have to. She makes it and becomes an incredible celebrity, especially on the last day of the fair but people dont think when they look at her something doesnt seem quite right. Shes billed herself as around a 40yearold and in fact shes 64 and she describes herself as a dancing teacher. People think she doesnt look hat limber, etc. Though she did this amazing thing and then wanted to go on the road with a show with her barrel and the problem was is that her manager couldnt convince people that she would have actually done this daredevil trick because she didnt fit the part. She wasnt young, she wasnt beautiful. She didnt look like a funky attraction and so eventually, one of her managers stole her barrel, put somebody in to play the part of annie taylor and she was left to sell postcards in Niagara Falls for almost the rest of her life. Mark so there was a lot riding on this worlds fair in buffalo. Buffalo was definitely the ruling class that wanted to put this on that ponyied up a half a million dollars, which is even a lot more money than it is today in a matter of hours. They got together in a room, that he emerged and had commitments for that much money because they wanted the worlds fair in buffalo and not in detroit, right . Margaret thats right. Mark so there was a lot of pressure to get a big return financially. In the end there were eight Million People who went through the turn styles. That seems like a lot of people but from reading your book there was constant pressure all the time to get more interest, get more people to come and in the end they still came you were short. Margaret the fair producers were extraordinarily optimistic and the press fueled the optimistic optimism. This is going to possibly be bigger than chicago. This will be the best fair ever held in the United States because we pulled ourselves out of a recession, people have pocket money. Buffalo has Niagara Falls nearby. 40 Million People can come to buffalo very easily on overnight trains. Its going to be basically the hit of the century. And so there was a tremendous amount of well, we have to say overconfidence. Other things played into the shortfall. The weather was bad in the spring and early summer. The advertising, people say later it was a bit off. There was also some speculation that the focus on latin america hadnt brought in the numbers of people who really wanted to see prashens orduced by germ and they are germans and ey were unclear tuesday what to expect from latin american shows. They were concerned by the middle of the summer but they had an answer, which. To bring in president mckinley in september and he would effectively turn things around. Mark and he did but not in the way that was intended. Margaret he did turn things around, absolutely. Mark is this on . I feel like it just went out. Ill use yours in the meantime. Well just go back and forth. Margaret ok. Mark is this better . Ok. So mckinley comes out, he gives his blessing to the fair and then hes tradget tragically killed and i believe there are about two months left in the exhibition at that point and attendance really takes a huge hit so clearly that was one of the reasons why the attendance goals may not have been melt. After mckinley died, as you said, it took eight days for him to die. It looked like he was going to come out of it. The press were already writing about his recovery and then he took a turn for the worse and died pretty suddenly. Really big e a pall over the fair going forward. And not over just the fair. It continued to cast a pall over the city of buffalo. Before we talk about that, what did the doctors and surgeons do that some feel wasnt enough, maybe they didnt ill let you answer. That theres a lot of controversy about that. Margaret sure. Well, theres a lot of second guessing as you can imagine and there was some thought that the bullet had been left in mckinleys back when it might have been pulled out and maybe that would have done the trick there wasnt enough sterilization that was going on. Perhaps they hadnt closed things properly but one of the things i did was talk to some trauma surgeons today and ask to take a look at the case and to see what might have been possible. And thibs that even today with imaging and antibiotics that it would have been touch and the pancreas s that his had been blown apart a bit and had spilled some poisonous enzymes. So he couldnt probably recover there was this moment that buffalo had believed it had done something really miraculous and it gave rise to not only a sense of relief but also a belief that buffalo would now be the temporary nations capital. That the millburg house would be the temporary white house. The cabinet would be set up in the buffalo club. Just this amazing moment of, again, relief and exhilaration and then all of a sudden within few hours things take a downturn. The president had been asking for cigars and toast and then all of a sudden he cant eat the toast. Whats going on and they pull everything out. Digitalis, strict nine, brandy. Give everything they possibly can to him to help stimulate his heart and it just doesnt work. Mark so has that continued to cast a dark smell spell over the city of buffalo . Margaret well, as some of you sitting here know, i taught a course once on the Boston Red Sox called red sox nation so i very familiar with curses, especially regarding sports teams. Im not a big believer in curses and spells but possibly some of you are. Have to think back, to what possibly could have been done differently with regard to mckinley. Aside from the confidence that people felt that he was going to recover, including people like the Vice President , teddy roosevelt. Cant find any fault and i also think that buffalo has paid a big price for any sins it might have committed in the 20th century back when i was growing buffalo is on the upswing. Im sure that the bills and sabres, their time is about to come and i dont think we can look back to mckinley for this. Mark well just blame rex ryan. You grew up in hamburg. You lived a couple of years in buffalo, just a short distance from the panamerican exhibition but you told me you never really knew much about buffalos history, pan am or otherwise. What got you to want to research if panamerican exposition . Margaret i wanted to make up a story about as a child i had wandered around fordham drive and Lincoln Parkway and mused about the days along ago and louvred loved history from the very beginning but that would be a total lie. Majored in english i dont think i took a history course until after college so it was a number of years ago i was teaching a course on 19th Century America and i assigned eric larsens remarkable devil in the white city, and he talked about this amazing effort. This grand worlds fair, the white city that was so magnificent and influential and at that point i was looking for a good story to tell and it came to me that there might be another fair that had some drama associated with it. And so i came back to buffalo, thanks to my friends the gurneys and i began to dig around and thanks also to mark goldman, who helped me with a lot of this research discovered that there were all sorts of eccentric characters that provided the public with not necessary little comic relief but distracted them from the misery of the assassination in the fall of the fair and they some of the themes of the fair, in that they all kind of resisted or opposed or offered a rebuttal to some of the themes of supremacy and dom nation that had been expressed by the fairs directors. Mark your research is drawn mostly from newspaper accounts of the day which were not always the most reliable. Along with medical records. Literature. It had to be extremely challenging. To read the book, it went so amlessly and the prose the flowing, i cant imagine how much work that took. Margaret i was so happy when i turned on my computer one day that althe discover panamerican record books had been digitized. This made things so much easier. Not that i hadnt loved coming back to my hometown but it was a long drive and it was challenging. Som