Wells, along with others such as Frederick Douglass, wrote a protest pamphlet entitled “The Reason Why the Colored American Is Not in the World’s Columbian Exposition.” In a portion written by Douglass, he aimed to “explain the grounds of the prejudice, hate and contempt in which [black people] are still held. . . . So when it is asked why we are excluded from the World’s Columbian Exposition, the answer is Slavery.”
