Hall of Negro Life

Inside, visitors passed six exhibit groups and, in two rooms, a $75,000 loan of Black painting and sculpture from New York's Harmon Foundation, with work by Hale Woodruff, Richmond Barthe and the Texan Samuel A. Countee. Raoul Josset's seal over the door showed a figure breaking chains. Outside were a 2,000-seat amphitheater for daily music and drama and a concession called Little Harlem. Pamphlets included W. E. B. Du Bois's What the Negro Has Done for the United States and Texas. An estimated 60 percent of visitors were White, and several Texas colleges sent White students to see it.

What the plaque says

Hall of Negro Life One of the federal work programs enacted during the Great Depression was the construction of a Texas Centennial Exposition to celebrate 100 years of independence from Mexico. The city of Dallas was awarded the honor of hosting the statewide exposition site. The task of remaking the fifty-year-old Fair Park into a modern exposition fell to Dallas architect George Dahl (1894-1987). Of the approximately 50 structures designed by Dahl and his staff, one was built to showcase the accomplishments of the African American community: the Hall of Negro Life. Before Dahl was involved, federal funding for the hall was secured by the tireless work of Antonio Maceo Smith (1903-1977) and Maynard H. Jackson (1894-1953), two leaders of the Dallas African American community. Jesse O. Thomas (1885-1972), once Southern Field Director for the National Urban League and a protege of Booker T. Washington, was selected as the general manager of the building. Smith served as assistant general manager. The building contained nearly 14,000 square feet of exhibit space and 9,000 square feet of wall space. The hall featured exhibits under six classifications: education, fine arts, health, agriculture, mechanical arts and business. Nearly 400 exhibits from 32 states were shown, with Texas' 76 exhibits representing the most from any state. The federal government supplied an additional 78 exhibits. Total attendance to the Hall of Negro Life over the course of the fair was 400,000. At the end of the Texas Centennial celebration, the Exposition Corporation of Dallas took over the fairgrounds with the intention of continuing the next year as the Pan American Exposition. The Hall of Negro Life was one of only two exhibit buildings demolished. For the short time it stood, the Hall of Negro Life celebrated the numerous accomplishments and deeds of the African American community in America. (2021)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• African American Museum, Dallas — steps away
  Founded in 1974 at Bishop College, a free Fair Park museum holding the Sepia photograph archive, African art and A. Maceo Smith's papers, and the story of the Hall of Negro Life.
• Fair Park — 0.2 mi
  The State Fair of Texas grounds since 1886, where the 1936 Texas Centennial Exposition left one of the country's greatest concentrations of Art Deco exposition buildings.
• Dallas Heritage Village at Old City Park — 1.4 mi
  Dallas's first city park, laid out around Browder's Spring in 1876, now a museum of historic buildings moved here from across North Texas, among them Millermore, a cotton planter's mansion.
• Dallas Museum of Art — 2.2 mi
  A city art museum that began as the Dallas Art Association in 1903, grew up in Fair Park, and has stood in the Arts District since 1984 under a forty-foot barrel vault.

More markers nearby

• Texas Women in the Civil War, A Tribute to — steps away
• State Fair of Texas — 0.2 mi
• Texas Centennial Exposition — 0.2 mi
• WRR Radio — 0.3 mi