Setting the Scene: Institutionalized Racism at the 1909 Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition

The signing of the Alaska Treaty of Cessation on March 30, 1867. From left to right: Robert S. Chew, William H. Seward, William Hunter, Mr. Bodisco, Eduard de Stoeckl, Charles Sumner and Frederick W. Seward.

An American political cartoon from 1867 depicting Secretary of State William H. Seward and President Andrew Johnson welcoming the "representatives" of the new territory to Washington, D.C. This cartoon derides Seward for having made a bad bargain and for choosing to annex Alaska and her natives. 

The 1909 Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition (AYP Expo) took place in Seattle, WA, and celebrated the development of the Pacific Northwest (orginally planned for 1907, the year marked the 10th anniversary of the Klondike Gold Rush), and therefore heavily perpetuated American sentiments of Manifest Destiny. 

The 1867 Alaska Purchase reinforced the feeling that any form of imperialism has great benefits to the people, further indenting the strategy of imperializing into American culture. Secretary of State William Seward purchased 600,000 square miles of barren tundra from Russia for $7.2 million, but this decision was considered by the public to be a massive mistake on Seward's part ("Seward's Folly"). After all, what use to the U.S. was an icey wasteland filled with indigenous "Eskimos," especially when they could barely manage their own Native American population? The U.S. government defended its decision by promising that there were riches to be found in Alaska, and the 1897 Klondike Gold Rush justified their claims.

Essentially, the AYP Expo set the stage for a grand spectacle laden with racist and imperialist overtones, and the differing displays of white babies versus Native American babies exemplifies these turn-of-the-century American prejudices and institutionalized racism.