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CLASSIC: The 1904 Racist Summer Olympic Games in St. Louis · Ridiculous History

0:00
Speaker 1: Welcome back to the show Ridiculous Historians. We return to
0:03
Speaker 1: you with a classic episode that's been on our mind
0:06
Speaker 1: as we recorded an exploration of the World's Fairs. We
0:12
Speaker 1: mentioned this briefly and we'd love to share it with
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Speaker 1: you in full. Over in Saint Louis, Missouri, during the
0:19
Speaker 1: nineteen oh four World's Fair, people also held the Summer Olympics,
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Speaker 1: and got to be honest with you, it was ridiculous.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, ridiculously offensive and terrible.
0:32
Speaker 3: And I'm so glad though that we hit upon this
0:34
Speaker 3: classic episode right around our current conversations about some of
0:37
Speaker 3: the worst examples of things that happened at World's Fairs.
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Speaker 2: So strap in.
0:43
Speaker 3: There's going to be some stuff that's going to make
0:45
Speaker 3: you cringe a little bit in this episode, but it's all,
0:47
Speaker 3: you know, it's all in the service of a ridiculous history.
0:53
Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Let's begin today's
1:21
Speaker 1: show with a contextual fact. According to what we know
1:25
Speaker 1: from historical records, the very first Olympic Games in antiquity
1:31
Speaker 1: can be traced back to seven seventy six BCE.
1:35
Speaker 2: Ben Noel, You've blown my mind.
1:38
Speaker 1: It's weird when we think about just how ancient that
1:42
Speaker 1: practice was. Now, the games did not occur every year
1:46
Speaker 1: continually from that point.
1:48
Speaker 4: Yeah, there was a lull, about a fifteen hundred year lull,
1:52
Speaker 4: as it turns out, and then it was kind of
1:56
Speaker 4: resuscitated by a guy by the name of Pierre Baron
2:00
Speaker 4: de Coubertin. Yes, and Casey Pegram joins us, hello, is
2:04
Speaker 4: that correct?
2:05
Speaker 2: Yeah, Pierre de coup Dartin.
2:07
Speaker 1: And that's been Casey on the case from our super producer,
2:12
Speaker 1: Casey Pegram. WHOA you cool with those double sound cure
2:16
Speaker 1: You flipped the script there, my man, I love it.
2:19
Speaker 4: But no, Pierre who was originally known by Pierre de Fredier, Casey.
2:24
Speaker 2: Pierre de Fleidy feity flighty.
2:27
Speaker 1: That's that's why he's here.
2:28
Speaker 2: He's here for a lot of reasons.
2:30
Speaker 1: He's here for amazing reasons. So tell us about this guy.
2:32
Speaker 4: Now that we've jacked up the flow entirely with valuable
2:35
Speaker 4: pronunciation information from mister Casey Pegrim. Yeah, this guy was
2:39
Speaker 4: an educator from France who totally revived the Olympic Games
2:43
Speaker 4: in eighteen ninety six in Greece. Indeed, Ben, as it
2:48
Speaker 4: would be appropriate to do, I guess to carry on
2:51
Speaker 4: that torch that. Yeah, I was in Athens in eighteen
2:54
Speaker 4: ninety six, and by most accounts I've read that one
2:57
Speaker 4: went okay. And then they had one in Paris which
3:01
Speaker 4: was apparently a ship show. And then they had one
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Speaker 4: that is the subject of today's episode in Old Saint Louis, Missouri.
3:09
Speaker 1: Yes, massurra, Missouri, Missouri got uh ride in or chime
3:15
Speaker 1: in on ridiculous historians local Missouri residents to let us
3:19
Speaker 1: know how you prefer to pronounce.
3:21
Speaker 2: It, shred us. We welcome it.
3:22
Speaker 1: I'm having so much fun with that. So it's true.
3:26
Speaker 1: Nol America's first Olympic Games, the first Olympic Games in
3:31
Speaker 1: the US were held in nineteen oh four in Saint
3:35
Speaker 1: Louis or Saint Louis, and they were tied to that
3:38
Speaker 1: year's World Fair, which happened in the same city, and
3:42
Speaker 1: there was even Okay, So before we get too deep
3:45
Speaker 1: into this, folks, things were already starting off on a bizarre, awkward,
3:50
Speaker 1: and terrible foot when the nineteen oh four Olympics moved
3:55
Speaker 1: to Missouri because they were originally supposed to be in
3:58
Speaker 1: the US, but supposed to be in a different city.
4:00
Speaker 4: Yeah, in the city of Chicago, which I'm very much
4:03
Speaker 4: looking forward to traveling to next weekend to see the
4:06
Speaker 4: band My Bloody Valentine. That's all I'm going to say. Yeah,
4:09
Speaker 4: I'm looking forward to Chicago's a beautiful city. But unfortunately
4:13
Speaker 4: Saint Louis made some problems for Chicago because Saint Louis
4:16
Speaker 4: was already set to host this World's Fair, which had
4:21
Speaker 4: a really interesting name that was not the World's Fair.
4:23
Speaker 4: It was called the Louisiana Purchase Centennial Exhibition. And they
4:29
Speaker 4: were none too happy. The organizers of that little shindig
4:32
Speaker 4: none too happy that the Olympics were going to give
4:34
Speaker 4: them a run for their money during the same period
4:38
Speaker 4: in the summer in Chicago.
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Speaker 2: So they threatened, according to this.
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Speaker 4: Article by Nate Demeyo of Memory Palace Fame on Slate,
4:47
Speaker 4: to out Olympics the Olympics, in other words, making it
4:50
Speaker 4: such a big dog and pony show that the Olympics,
4:53
Speaker 4: which was not as widely known at the time its
4:56
Speaker 4: being only the third year, would probably suffer significantly. So
5:00
Speaker 4: Kubertan was like, Okay, I guess you better play ball
5:03
Speaker 4: with Saint Louis. Yeah.
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Speaker 1: They said specifically that they were going to make the
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Speaker 1: official Olympic events in Chicago look terrible, look pitiful in comparison.
5:17
Speaker 1: And at this time the Baron was still trying ardently,
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Speaker 1: because remember this isn't too far past eighteen ninety six,
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Speaker 1: still trying ardently to resurrect the modern Olympics and give
5:29
Speaker 1: it the credibility it deserved. He wanted to avoid any controversy,
5:35
Speaker 1: and he said he would, you know, for the greater
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Speaker 1: good of the Olympics, back down and award the location
5:42
Speaker 1: to Saint Louis. But the problem was, first off, most
5:47
Speaker 1: people in Europe at that time probably had not heard
5:51
Speaker 1: of Saint Louis at all.
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Speaker 4: Yeah, he was described as a second tier city, which
5:55
Speaker 4: I think is insulting. Saint Louis is beautiful, but New
5:58
Speaker 4: York it is not.
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Speaker 1: I mean, I went to Saint Louis recently on some
6:02
Speaker 1: unrelated adventures, and I got to say, it's amazing city,
6:05
Speaker 1: amazing music, amazing barbecue if you like barbecue. But at
6:09
Speaker 1: this time I got that arch right. But at this time,
6:13
Speaker 1: the location there, in what they did describe as a
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Speaker 1: second tier city, was an incredible barrier to athletes, especially
6:23
Speaker 1: European athletes. We have to remember this was before an
6:26
Speaker 1: interstate system, so travel to the American Midwest was a
6:30
Speaker 1: daunting task and almost all of the top European athletes
6:35
Speaker 1: didn't make it, and ultimately fewer than half of the
6:41
Speaker 1: Olympic events that year had even a single entrant who
6:45
Speaker 1: was not from America.
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Speaker 4: And I want to say I read somewhere I'm sorry
6:50
Speaker 4: for being vague about this, folks, but that America actually
6:55
Speaker 4: scooped up some European athletes and made them part of
7:00
Speaker 4: the American team, or folks that had recently immigrated to
7:02
Speaker 4: America but did not receive citizenship yet, and they were
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Speaker 4: the ones who won many of the medals. And there
7:09
Speaker 4: are countries that are to this day disputing those wins
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Speaker 4: because they basically kind of sniped some of their people
7:17
Speaker 4: and they weren't officially citizens of the United States. So
7:19
Speaker 4: very wild West kind of Olympics here, and for more
7:23
Speaker 4: reasons than one.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, sort of shooting of shooting from the hip right,
7:26
Speaker 1: going winging it a little bit more than is appropriate.
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Speaker 1: Did we mention the mastermind behind this nol, James Edward Sullivan.
7:36
Speaker 2: No, we have not, but he's a huge part of
7:37
Speaker 2: the story.
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Speaker 1: Okay, So James Edward Sullivan, American sports official. He was
7:42
Speaker 1: born in eighteen sixty two. I lived until September nineteen fourteen.
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Speaker 1: He was the chief organizer of these nineteen oh four
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Speaker 1: Summer Olympics, and a lot of the terrible, terrible mistakes
7:58
Speaker 1: that occurred fall upon his shoulders. In this situation. He's
8:03
Speaker 1: the one who is putting out the threats. He's the
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Speaker 1: one who was pushing the baron to move this, and
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Speaker 1: he is one of the reasons that so many disastrous
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Speaker 1: things occurred with the actual events.
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Speaker 2: He was the organizer of the World's Fair. Correct.
8:18
Speaker 1: Great question, and it's important that we clarify that point.
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Speaker 1: So James Edward Sullivan is the primary organizer of the
8:27
Speaker 1: nineteen oh four Summer Olympics, but the organizer of the
8:32
Speaker 1: Louisiana Purchase Exposition, which we've also seen both ways as
8:37
Speaker 1: either Louisiana Purchase Exhibition or Louisiana Purchase Exposition. The organizer
8:43
Speaker 1: of that stuff, whatever you want to call it, was
8:44
Speaker 1: a guy named David R. Francis. And the problem with
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Speaker 1: this was that the Saint Louis organizers treated the Olympic
8:54
Speaker 1: Games sort of as a side show to the World's Fair.
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Speaker 4: So the World's Fair is a big deal and very
9:01
Speaker 4: well established at this point, and.
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Speaker 1: There were other more popular, let's call them cultural exhibits.
9:08
Speaker 1: We're going to be remiss if we don't mention some
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Speaker 1: of the stuff that happened in those exhibits.
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Speaker 2: Yeah.
9:13
Speaker 1: Yeah, those were overshadowing the actual Olympic Games and events.
9:20
Speaker 1: And I believe in the nineteen oh four Games the
9:24
Speaker 1: total number of athletes was only six hundred and fifty one,
9:27
Speaker 1: six hundred and forty five men and six women, and.
9:30
Speaker 4: Yet for some reason it went on for like one
9:32
Speaker 4: hundred and seventy five days, which I thought was bizarre.
9:35
Speaker 4: Let's backtrack just a little bit too, back to the
9:37
Speaker 4: World's Fair. So you were talking about, let's talk about
9:39
Speaker 4: some of the things that made the World's Fair kind
9:41
Speaker 4: of cool. You had, you know, the kind of things
9:44
Speaker 4: you'd think about being at a fair, And on this
9:47
Speaker 4: particular one, they had Abe Lincoln's log cabin from when
9:50
Speaker 4: he was a boy. Okay, guess you wouldn't see that as
9:51
Speaker 4: most fairs. But they also had waffle cones and you know,
9:54
Speaker 4: new fangled contraptions and inventions, and I think this is
9:57
Speaker 4: where like peanut butter was debut Oh.
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Speaker 1: I'm so glad you mentioned that. Okay, yes, quick interjection.
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Speaker 1: There's a fantastic article but from serious Heats by a
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Speaker 1: guy named Robert Moss. The nineteen oh four World's Fair
10:09
Speaker 1: a turning point for American food. There were a lot
10:13
Speaker 1: of amazing food things that happened here. Allegedly, the first
10:19
Speaker 1: hot dog ever was made in the nineteen or sold
10:22
Speaker 1: in the nineteen oh four World's Fair, when a vendor
10:28
Speaker 1: named Anton Futwanger was giving out sausages to people, but
10:34
Speaker 1: they were too hot for people to hold, and so
10:37
Speaker 1: he had his brother in law bake buns to hold
10:39
Speaker 1: the meat, creating the world's first hot dog. It's important
10:43
Speaker 1: to us through this episode, fellow ridiculous historians, to try
10:47
Speaker 1: to find some pluses. Yeah, but so please go on
10:50
Speaker 1: about the World's Fair. I have this list of amazing
10:52
Speaker 1: food stuff too.
10:53
Speaker 4: We can keep going with that if you like. I'm
10:54
Speaker 4: just trying to, you know, put a silver lining on
10:57
Speaker 4: this story. I don't know, Yeah, peanut, butter's not enough
10:59
Speaker 4: facil lying for where we're going. We might have told
11:01
Speaker 4: us go ahead and get there. One one last little
11:04
Speaker 4: thing about kober Ten, who, by the way, was the
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Speaker 4: guy who re established the established the International Olympic Committee.
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Speaker 2: That was his deal, so had the bear.
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Speaker 4: The Baron, So our third year of this event, after
11:14
Speaker 4: fifteen hundred year lull, the stakes are high. He's kind
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Speaker 4: of strong armed into going to Saint Louis and was
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Speaker 4: so peeved at the whole thing that he actually didn't
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Speaker 4: even show up. He is quoted in saying that he
11:25
Speaker 4: had sort of a predisposition to assuming that the quality
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Speaker 4: of the Olympiad would match the quality of the city. Yeah,
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Speaker 4: so kind of turning his nose up at Saint Louis here.
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Speaker 1: Let's give him another quote too. That'll get us to
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Speaker 1: I think the meat of this episode. Also, these are
11:43
Speaker 1: the early days of the hamburger. I'm just gonna whenever
11:46
Speaker 1: we get too into too much disturbing stuff, how about
11:50
Speaker 1: we throw in a fun food.
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Speaker 2: Fetch sure that sounds good? Okay.
11:53
Speaker 1: So, in addition to his objections to the overall mediocrity
11:58
Speaker 1: or potential for posed by the nineteen oh four Olympics,
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Speaker 1: the Baron also took disapproving note of a spectacle, very
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Speaker 1: problematic spectacle called anthropology. Days before we tell you what
12:14
Speaker 1: those are, before we explore that, let's just go with
12:16
Speaker 1: this quote, he says, referencing these as for that outrage
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Speaker 1: of charade, it will of course lose its appeal when
12:23
Speaker 1: black men, red men, and yellow men learn to run,
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Speaker 1: jump and throw and leave the white men behind them.
12:29
Speaker 1: Think of all the problems with that.
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Speaker 4: Yes, but at the same time oddly forward thinking compared
12:35
Speaker 4: to the story we're about to tell you, So.
12:44
Speaker 2: Why don't we just launch write in it's sort of twofold.
12:46
Speaker 4: It's interesting because even Ben and I off air were
12:48
Speaker 4: a little confused about who was actually hosting these anthropology days.
12:52
Speaker 4: As it turns out it was kind of a partnership
12:54
Speaker 4: between the Olympics and the World's Fair. So I'm a
12:57
Speaker 4: little confused about how this guy, James Sullivan, who kind
13:00
Speaker 4: of was the chief organizer of the Numberlympics, wasn't like
13:03
Speaker 4: given the thumbs up from the Baron himself. But that
13:06
Speaker 4: we haven't quite run across that particular minutia yet. But
13:10
Speaker 4: here's the story. James Sullivan he believed one hundred percent
13:16
Speaker 4: in the utter superiority of white men and wanted very
13:21
Speaker 4: much to put on a display or a charade, as
13:25
Speaker 4: the Baron referred to it, to demonstrate this fact. So
13:30
Speaker 4: there was this thing that was a very strange phenomenon
13:32
Speaker 4: at the beginning of the twentieth century called human zoos,
13:36
Speaker 4: which were sort of like traveling carnivals, or it would
13:39
Speaker 4: be like the equivalent of a freak show or a
13:41
Speaker 4: side show, where indigenous people from places like the Philippines
13:47
Speaker 4: or Africa would be displayed in kind of mocked up
13:52
Speaker 4: versions of their traditional homes, but they would be you know,
13:58
Speaker 4: there's images in this really great article from Timeline called
14:02
Speaker 4: scientists staged a racist Olympics in nineteen oh four to
14:05
Speaker 4: prove white superiority that shows people just gathered around these
14:10
Speaker 4: picket fences and looking at children, men, women, all kind
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Speaker 4: of doing what they would be doing in their villages
14:20
Speaker 4: for example. Right, So Sullivan wanted to take this a
14:24
Speaker 4: step further, and the World's Fair itself had a mocked
14:29
Speaker 4: up Filipino village because at the time, the Philippines was
14:32
Speaker 4: a newly established territory of the United States, so it
14:36
Speaker 4: was they wanted to show their dominance.
14:39
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, he wanted to legitimize it too, legitimize this belief,
14:43
Speaker 1: which was already at that time not considered controversial. That's
14:47
Speaker 1: when he contacted a doctor W. J. McGee, who was
14:52
Speaker 1: president of the American Anthropological Association and head of the
14:57
Speaker 1: Department of Anthropology at the Saint Louis World's Fair. McGee
15:01
Speaker 1: thought because indigenous people lived in harmony with nature, they
15:04
Speaker 1: were endowed with special strength and abilities that quote, white
15:08
Speaker 1: people simply didn't have hikes. And so he was compelled,
15:12
Speaker 1: perhaps for some different motivations by Sullivan's concept, and they
15:16
Speaker 1: began organizing these anthropology Days, which they sometimes referred to
15:22
Speaker 1: apparently and formally as special Olympics.
15:25
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, not the way we think of that term today.
15:29
Speaker 4: And you know, McGee did have a scientific background and
15:33
Speaker 4: thought that he was conducting research, but he had this
15:36
Speaker 4: preconceived notion that we mentioned earlier that indigenous people had
15:41
Speaker 4: certain advantages, typically had to do with strength or endurance
15:46
Speaker 4: or things like that, and he wanted to build this
15:48
Speaker 4: hierarchical diagram of genealogy of the human species, of which
15:55
Speaker 4: he thought these indigenous people were at the bottom, because
15:57
Speaker 4: his main concern was in intellect.
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Speaker 1: And he clearly subscribed to the concept of eugenics and
16:03
Speaker 1: selective breeding, which was alarmingly popular or accepted in the
16:09
Speaker 1: US at that time. So they stacked the odds against
16:13
Speaker 1: these people. They took several people from these exhibitions, like
16:17
Speaker 1: what you mentioned earlier in nol the exhibition featuring people
16:21
Speaker 1: from the Philippines, and they said, well, you'll compete in
16:27
Speaker 1: a special version of Olympic events on August twelfth and
16:31
Speaker 1: thirteenth of that year of nineteen oh four. And all
16:34
Speaker 1: their competitions that they put these people in were European
16:38
Speaker 1: style competitions shot put, high jump, long jump, running the mile,
16:43
Speaker 1: other stuff. But they didn't teach the participants. They didn't
16:47
Speaker 1: tell them a damn thing about what they were supposed
16:50
Speaker 1: to be doing.
16:51
Speaker 4: Yeah, And I mean, even I a lifelong citizen of
16:57
Speaker 4: these United States, I don't know the rules of of
17:00
Speaker 4: the high jump or the right form or how to
17:02
Speaker 4: do it properly, or you know, I don't.
17:05
Speaker 2: I really don't.
17:05
Speaker 4: And then that sounds, you know, like it would be
17:07
Speaker 4: so apparent or intuitive, and it's just not.
17:10
Speaker 1: There are very specific regulations too, for any professional sporting event.
17:15
Speaker 1: So from what I understand, correct me if this is
17:17
Speaker 1: if this is off, from what I understand, they didn't
17:20
Speaker 1: tell them any there's obviously a language barrier. They didn't
17:24
Speaker 1: tell them anything at most for instance, in the one
17:27
Speaker 1: hundred yard dash or whatever, the participants just sort of
17:30
Speaker 1: got the idea that they were supposed to run, but
17:34
Speaker 1: in many cases they just saw gun fired and were like,
17:37
Speaker 1: what dext yeah, or.
17:39
Speaker 4: They were just more fascinated with the weapon itself and
17:41
Speaker 4: the loud noise that it made than what it signified,
17:44
Speaker 4: which just seems just so ridiculous and shortsighted to me
17:47
Speaker 4: that they would just assume that these folks would would
17:50
Speaker 4: have the cultural knowledge of how these games work.
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Speaker 2: That's just bonkers to me.
17:54
Speaker 1: They also had tennis, which is weird because tennis is
17:58
Speaker 1: something like, look, even if you're skeptical with our explanation
18:01
Speaker 1: here and you think, well, sure, you can just relatively
18:06
Speaker 1: easily explain to someone the basics of something like a
18:09
Speaker 1: high jump or one hundred yard dash. Tennis, I think
18:11
Speaker 1: we can all agree has very specific equipment, rules and strategies.
18:16
Speaker 1: This Anthropology Day's exhibition, in this event, whatever you want
18:21
Speaker 1: to call it, was a huge failure. There's very little notice,
18:27
Speaker 1: so there were not many people even in the crowd
18:30
Speaker 1: to watch, and Sullivan thought at least that the games
18:35
Speaker 1: were somewhat successful for his ulterior motive, because he said, Aha,
18:40
Speaker 1: this proves that these this is a terrible word. But
18:43
Speaker 1: to him, this proves that these quote unquote savages can't
18:46
Speaker 1: play tennis.
18:48
Speaker 4: Oh cool, good, good job. That's super helpful data there.
18:52
Speaker 4: All of these presuppositions that these guys made were based
18:55
Speaker 4: on the kind of inherent, just thoughtless racism that we
19:00
Speaker 4: take for granted today that most learned people would hopefully
19:02
Speaker 4: not be party too. For example, they assumed that anyone
19:06
Speaker 4: from a nation in Africa, for example, where spears were
19:10
Speaker 4: thrown as a means of hunting and protection and what
19:13
Speaker 4: have you, would automatically be good at throwing a javelin.
19:17
Speaker 2: You know, yeah, you know what it makes me think of.
19:19
Speaker 4: It makes me think of There's an episode of Curb
19:22
Speaker 4: Your Enthusiasm where one of Larry's friends has adopted a
19:25
Speaker 4: Chinese baby, and Larry immediately asked them, so, is he like,
19:29
Speaker 4: automatically good at using chopsticks?
19:31
Speaker 2: Yeah?
19:31
Speaker 1: I mean, those are horrific things to think. And of
19:34
Speaker 1: course Larry David, we can safely say, is lampooning that
19:38
Speaker 1: and mocking it and does not himself believe it.
19:40
Speaker 4: But there is another angle here because of the thing
19:41
Speaker 4: you mentioned earlier where it's like, because these folks were
19:45
Speaker 4: closer to nature and did these things as part of
19:48
Speaker 4: their everyday life, it's not just a nurture thing. There's
19:50
Speaker 4: also a nature thing here. Where they assumed that because
19:53
Speaker 4: they had done these things in their day to day
19:55
Speaker 4: they'd be able to immediately one to one translate them
19:57
Speaker 4: to some kind of silly game, and that didn't happen.
20:00
Speaker 4: For example, the folks who tried the javelin that were
20:03
Speaker 4: from these nations that use spears were terrible at it.
20:07
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I think also there's an important point we
20:10
Speaker 1: have to make about these people. So according to that
20:13
Speaker 1: timeline article that we cited earlier by showshoe Parks, these
20:18
Speaker 1: people were already put in horrific conditions. So more than
20:23
Speaker 1: twenty million people attended the nineteen oh four World's Fair. Right,
20:27
Speaker 1: they saw electricity, they heard the first telephone. They also
20:31
Speaker 1: went to see three thousand people who were placed in
20:34
Speaker 1: these exhibitions, people from the African continent, the Asian continent,
20:38
Speaker 1: and parts of the Americas. But the way these people
20:43
Speaker 1: were forced to live was incredibly was like incredibly dangerous.
20:48
Speaker 1: Regardless of the weather, they would be forced to wear
20:52
Speaker 1: traditional clothing. I'm doing air quotes here, even if it
20:55
Speaker 1: didn't suit the climate. And then, like people were supposed
20:58
Speaker 1: to who were forced to live in that Philippine village
21:00
Speaker 1: would be made to perform traditional rituals that were only
21:04
Speaker 1: supposed to happen seasonally, over and over again to shock
21:08
Speaker 1: or entertain an audience. There were appalling sanitary conditions, and
21:13
Speaker 1: a lot of these people felt that they had nowhere
21:16
Speaker 1: else to go. They were stuck in this alien environment.
21:18
Speaker 1: And imagine being pulled out of that. So your life
21:22
Speaker 1: is already not at its best. And then this Sullivan
21:25
Speaker 1: guy comes with some other people, grabs you, gibbers at
21:29
Speaker 1: you in English, hands you a javelin, and clearly thinks
21:33
Speaker 1: that he is going to prove that not only he,
21:36
Speaker 1: but anyone who looks like him is inherently better than you.
21:39
Speaker 4: I'm also confused that because he talks about how he
21:41
Speaker 4: had these ideas that they would be superior physically.
21:44
Speaker 2: So what was he what was he trying to? What
21:47
Speaker 2: was he getting out?
21:48
Speaker 1: I think it was McGee who thought he could prove
21:51
Speaker 1: specific physical advantages, and it was Sullivan who thought he
21:58
Speaker 1: could prove that what he saw as white people was
22:02
Speaker 1: inherently superior.
22:03
Speaker 4: So I guess the reason and so confusing to me
22:05
Speaker 4: is because the logic behind literally all of this is
22:08
Speaker 4: utterly convoluted and bizarre.
22:11
Speaker 1: Yeah, and a lot of that convolution and bizarre nature
22:15
Speaker 1: comes from the fact that it's based on things that
22:17
Speaker 1: are completely wrong.
22:18
Speaker 4: It's true. And here's an interesting fact too. Nate Demeyo's
22:22
Speaker 4: article enslate. He points out that these folks, though living
22:27
Speaker 4: in what he refers to as quasi captivity, were paid
22:31
Speaker 4: probably not much, and obviously they were living in horrible circumstances.
22:36
Speaker 4: But some of them even had like managers or agents.
22:40
Speaker 2: You know. It was almost like being a I don't.
22:42
Speaker 4: Know, Santa Claus impersonator or something. But the problem is
22:46
Speaker 4: a lot of these folks that were in these human
22:48
Speaker 4: zoos were never fully able to assimilate into American culture, right,
22:54
Speaker 4: and they were kind of held back by here, we're
22:57
Speaker 4: giving you an opportunity to not really live but just barely.
23:02
Speaker 2: Right.
23:02
Speaker 1: Yeah, And for McGee, the body of data that he
23:07
Speaker 1: wanted to collect from this to prove his wack a
23:10
Speaker 1: do notion of racial hierarchies and certain inherent advantages or disadvantages,
23:16
Speaker 1: he didn't get it. We don't know if that body
23:18
Speaker 1: of data ever existed.
23:20
Speaker 4: They did give it another go, though there was a
23:22
Speaker 4: second attempt at this unconnected to the Olympic Games, where
23:27
Speaker 4: they did try to teach them the sports. You think
23:30
Speaker 4: that would have been front of mine the first time,
23:32
Speaker 4: but they just seem to have missed that entirely. Yeah,
23:35
Speaker 4: how that one go? Did that any better results?
23:37
Speaker 1: No?
23:38
Speaker 2: No?
23:38
Speaker 1: No?
23:38
Speaker 2: Yeah.
23:39
Speaker 1: It turns out if something if you base something on
23:43
Speaker 1: a terrible idea and nonsense the first time you try it,
23:46
Speaker 1: it'll still be a terrible idea, nonsense the second time.
23:54
Speaker 1: While we're at this point, I just want to mention
23:56
Speaker 1: another another fun food fact. I'm still right okay. So
24:03
Speaker 1: apparently at the nineteo four World's Fair, when it was hot,
24:08
Speaker 1: there were very few people interested in this hot tea
24:11
Speaker 1: offered by a guy named Richard Blechton who was the
24:15
Speaker 1: tea commissioner in the India pavilion. And this guy got
24:18
Speaker 1: so desperate that he decided to pour his tea over ice,
24:22
Speaker 1: and supposedly, according to legend, he invented iced tea.
24:27
Speaker 2: Well then the drink.
24:28
Speaker 4: Yeah, not the rapper, not the lyrics, only iced tea
24:32
Speaker 4: invented iced tea?
24:34
Speaker 2: Yeah? Where do we go from here, Ben.
24:36
Speaker 1: I guess well we should also say that, you know,
24:40
Speaker 1: I think we did mention. I hope he established that
24:43
Speaker 1: the concept of human zoos was not unique at all. Right,
24:47
Speaker 1: you mentioned earlier it wasn't unique at all to the
24:50
Speaker 1: World's Fair. It existed in other parts of the world,
24:54
Speaker 1: in Europe as well. It is better for history, of course,
25:00
Speaker 1: that this proved to be a failure. There were some
25:04
Speaker 1: other first that occurred during the Olympics, so in some
25:08
Speaker 1: ways it wasn't a complete disaster. It was the first
25:10
Speaker 1: time boxing, freestyle wrestling, the kathlon, and dumbbells made their
25:15
Speaker 1: debut in the modern Olympics, right, and luckily James Sullivan
25:21
Speaker 1: would go down in history as the fool he was,
25:25
Speaker 1: which I consider a positive aspect absolutely how so, because
25:29
Speaker 1: he was clearly and categorically proven wrong espousing a belief
25:32
Speaker 1: that was both offensive and incredibly common at the time.
25:37
Speaker 1: So I consider that a win for our species overall.
25:40
Speaker 4: Yeah, Well, in the spirit of staying ridiculous, because while
25:43
Speaker 4: this racial Shenanigan's is absolutely ridiculous, it's also pretty depressing
25:48
Speaker 4: and quite dark when you think about it.
25:50
Speaker 2: The idea of human zoos.
25:52
Speaker 4: It reminds me of that the episode we did about
25:55
Speaker 4: the real human skull that was found in the diorama
25:57
Speaker 4: at a museum and the idea of grave robbing these
26:01
Speaker 4: indigenous people and taking them back to Europe and taxidermizing
26:05
Speaker 4: them culture. Oh, we haven't even mentioned the fact that
26:09
Speaker 4: a lot of this attitude was entirely based on the
26:11
Speaker 4: idea of imperialism of the United States. It was a
26:14
Speaker 4: stat you know, we had we had gotten this territory
26:16
Speaker 4: of the Philippines, we had this Filipino reservation, right, and
26:21
Speaker 4: it was this idea of showing our cultural dominance.
26:24
Speaker 1: I would say it's I would say it's ultimately descended
26:27
Speaker 1: from the European ideals that the Americans just they didn't
26:31
Speaker 1: invent it.
26:31
Speaker 4: No, no, no, for sure, but this is a really clear
26:33
Speaker 4: example of, you know, trying to put that on full display.
26:38
Speaker 4: So let's let's let's end with one funny story.
26:41
Speaker 1: I advanced to end with food facts.
26:43
Speaker 2: Okay, that's fine. So the next to last thing.
26:46
Speaker 1: Two folks don't leave completely depressed.
26:48
Speaker 4: It was kind of depressing too, but in a much
26:49
Speaker 4: more lighthearted, funny way. So the marathon at the Olympics
26:53
Speaker 4: themselves was just utterly disastrous. Uh.
26:57
Speaker 2: The winner a guy named Thomas Hicks.
27:00
Speaker 4: He finished in absurdly long three hours and twenty eight minutes,
27:04
Speaker 4: and that is because the conditions were just abhorrent. It
27:07
Speaker 4: was ninety degrees they it was on a road that
27:10
Speaker 4: was covered with dust, and I think according to history
27:13
Speaker 4: dot com, eighteen of the thirty two folks that were
27:16
Speaker 4: racing had to pull out because of sheer exhaustion. Somebody
27:21
Speaker 4: got a stomach hemorrhage and nearly died.
27:24
Speaker 1: William Garcia of California collapsed and had to be hospitalized
27:29
Speaker 1: because dust had coated his esophagus and ripped his stomach lining.
27:33
Speaker 2: Oh my god. Yeah, I'm glad we're ending with the
27:35
Speaker 2: food facts.
27:36
Speaker 4: So yeah, Thomas Hicks, he won with that ridiculously slow time,
27:42
Speaker 4: but only because his assistance kept feeding him doses of
27:45
Speaker 4: eggs and strychnine, egg whites and strych nine and brandy
27:50
Speaker 4: to keep him on his feet.
27:52
Speaker 1: Yeah, for the at the ten mile mark, they had
27:55
Speaker 1: to start taking care of him. He had begged them
27:57
Speaker 1: for a drink and they refused. They spun his mouth
28:00
Speaker 1: out instead. Strychnine in small doses was common as a
28:05
Speaker 1: stimulant at the time, and I know, weird it sounds,
28:08
Speaker 1: but there were no rules about performance enhancing drugs. But
28:12
Speaker 1: he was the ultimate winner. But did you hear about
28:14
Speaker 1: Fred Laws. He's my favorite guy of Fred Laws. Okay,
28:20
Speaker 1: so this guy Fred Laws LRZ. He leads the starters
28:25
Speaker 1: from the time they fired the gun, but by the
28:27
Speaker 1: first mile, Thomas Hicks hedges ahead, and Lores at the
28:32
Speaker 1: nine mile mark started getting these crazy stomach cramps, and
28:37
Speaker 1: so he decided to hitch a ride in an accompanying
28:40
Speaker 1: car and he waved at his fellow competitors as he ran,
28:45
Speaker 1: and then he rode in the car for eleven miles
28:49
Speaker 1: and then one of Hicks's handlers, one of the strych
28:52
Speaker 1: nine egg white guys, saw Lawyers and ordered him off
28:55
Speaker 1: the course, but Lare said eh, and keV running and
28:58
Speaker 1: finished with the time of under three hours, and the
29:01
Speaker 1: crowd went nuts, and they were like yay an American one.
29:04
Speaker 1: And then someone I think President Theodore Roosevelt's daughter placed
29:09
Speaker 1: a wreath on Lours's head and was about to put
29:13
Speaker 1: the actual metal around his neck when somebody finally busted him.
29:17
Speaker 1: The cheers turned to booze, and we don't know if
29:20
Speaker 1: Laws was sincere when he said this, but he smiled
29:22
Speaker 1: and said, I never intended to accept the honor. I
29:26
Speaker 1: finished only for the sake of a joke. And it's like, really,
29:29
Speaker 1: that's how you let it get that close to a
29:31
Speaker 1: gold medal. I don't know, man, I don't really buy it.
29:33
Speaker 2: It's a good story though, But Hicks.
29:35
Speaker 1: Does become the winner, right yep, because he didn't hop
29:38
Speaker 1: in a car for eleven miles.
29:40
Speaker 2: That's right, he hopped on his feet.
29:42
Speaker 4: Well, I'm picturing him vomiting constantly, clutching his guts, screaming
29:49
Speaker 4: for water, Yeah, screaming for water, having his little toadies
29:52
Speaker 4: pouring some disgusting mixture down his throat.
29:55
Speaker 2: You know.
29:57
Speaker 4: That's how you typically picture a marathon runner, right, right,
30:00
Speaker 4: that's the glory day's picture. So, as we said, there
30:04
Speaker 4: were a lot of food facts that we're pointing to
30:07
Speaker 4: when we entered more difficult parts of this story. I
30:11
Speaker 4: want to give a little bit of a gray lining
30:13
Speaker 4: here because some of those stories, while inspiring, pretty easy
30:19
Speaker 4: to debunk. If you were writing an email now about
30:22
Speaker 4: iced tea again to drink, the truth is that it
30:27
Speaker 4: had been around for decades beforehand. Yeah, I guess if
30:30
Speaker 4: you're the one that got the booth at the World's Fair,
30:33
Speaker 4: you might get the credit in history. But thankfully we've
30:35
Speaker 4: got sites like Serious Eats that do a great job
30:38
Speaker 4: of debunking that stuff. What did they say about the
30:40
Speaker 4: actual origins of ice tea?
30:41
Speaker 1: Man?
30:42
Speaker 2: Oh?
30:42
Speaker 1: Yeah, the actual origins of iced tea, which are interesting
30:46
Speaker 1: on their own, occur at least by eighteen sixty eight,
30:50
Speaker 1: probably way before eighteen sixty eight's like three decades before
30:53
Speaker 1: the World Fair. A widely circulated newspaper piece notes that
30:59
Speaker 1: ice tea with lemon juice is said to be a
31:01
Speaker 1: popular and healthy drink, and has instructions for making it,
31:05
Speaker 1: and it's also numerous cookbooks. So I think a lot
31:08
Speaker 1: of the marketing of World's Fair stuff is just that marketing,
31:14
Speaker 1: and we have to be careful because marketing, you know,
31:17
Speaker 1: is a glitzy version of the truth.
31:19
Speaker 4: Do you think it wasn't really Abe Lincoln's boyhood cabin
31:21
Speaker 4: that was there? Just some sort of replica?
31:23
Speaker 2: I don't know.
31:24
Speaker 1: It also reminds me, you know, all those old medieval counterfeitters,
31:29
Speaker 1: like a Canterbury Tale, who would run around.
31:31
Speaker 2: With fake reliquaries or partner's tale.
31:33
Speaker 1: Yeah, like the partner, But we do believe it is
31:37
Speaker 1: important for us to acknowledge these things and realize that
31:42
Speaker 1: in nineteen oh four at the World's Fair, people believe
31:46
Speaker 1: they were on the cusp of scientific innovation. You know
31:49
Speaker 1: that they were on the bleeding edge of technology, and
31:54
Speaker 1: in some ways they were, but their own preconceptions, their
31:59
Speaker 1: own prejudices, their own pre existing notions, limited the scope
32:04
Speaker 1: of their vision. And hopefully that's something that we can
32:06
Speaker 1: learn from in the modern day. Like I'm stretching to
32:09
Speaker 1: make it a little bit of a parable.
32:11
Speaker 4: Now, you're doing a good job, Ben, You like it,
32:13
Speaker 4: I do. It's a good way to frame it. Yeah,
32:15
Speaker 4: but there you have it. To quote Robert Lamb of
32:17
Speaker 4: stuff to blow your mind our sister podcast.
32:21
Speaker 2: So yeah, I think we leave it there, right.
32:23
Speaker 1: Ben, I agreed. We hope that you have enjoyed this episode.
32:27
Speaker 1: We would like to thank you for listening. We've been
32:29
Speaker 1: doing more and more sports related stuff recently.
32:32
Speaker 4: Have you noticed that, which is weird because I don't
32:34
Speaker 4: think either one of us are into sports, and it's
32:35
Speaker 4: possible that that shows in the episode.
32:37
Speaker 2: But we come to it with honest hearts.
32:39
Speaker 1: Honest hearts honest hearts and as fans of history if
32:43
Speaker 1: nothing else. So thank you for checking out the show
32:46
Speaker 1: and taking the strange journey with us. Thank you to
32:48
Speaker 1: our super producer, Casey Pegram, and thank you to Eve's Jeffcoat,
32:52
Speaker 1: who was our research assistant for this episode.
32:55
Speaker 4: If you want to reach us online, you can check
32:57
Speaker 4: us out on social media at Ridiculous History at Instagram
33:00
Speaker 4: and Twitter and Facebook, or you can join our Facebook community,
33:03
Speaker 4: the Ridiculous Historians. There's always all kinds of fun conversation
33:07
Speaker 4: and memory going on there. If you don't want to
33:09
Speaker 4: do any of that, you can write us an email
33:11
Speaker 4: at Ridiculous at HowStuffWorks dot com and I think we
33:14
Speaker 4: did not yet.
33:14
Speaker 2: Thank our pal Alex Williams.
33:16
Speaker 1: Who composed this to Thanks Alex.
33:28
Speaker 3: For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
33:31
Speaker 3: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.