Ridiculous HistoryCLASSIC: The 1904 Racist Summer Olympic Games in St. Louis
A few years after Baron Pierre de Coubertin revived the ancient sporting event known as the Olympics, he brought the games to the U.S. for the first time. The 1904 Summer Olympics were held in St. Louis, Missouri, coinciding with the 1904 World's Fair. Seems set to make history, right? Not the way you'd think. Join Ben and Noel as they take a closer look at the series of disastrous decisions and bizarre notions that led one games organizer to set up his own racist olympics in this week's Classic episode.
Welcome back to the show Ridiculous Historians. We return to you with a classic episode that's been on our mind as we recorded an exploration of the World's Fairs. We mentioned this briefly and we'd love to share it with you in full. Over in Saint Louis, Missouri, during the nineteen oh four World's Fair, people also held the Summer Olympics, and got to be honest with you, it was ridiculous.
Yeah, ridiculously offensive and terrible.
And I'm so glad though that we hit upon this classic episode right around our current conversations about some of the worst examples of things that happened at World's Fairs.
So strap in.
There's going to be some stuff that's going to make you cringe a little bit in this episode, but it's all, you know, it's all in the service of a ridiculous history.
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Let's begin today's show with a contextual fact. According to what we know from historical records, the very first Olympic Games in antiquity can be traced back to seven seventy six BCE.
Ben Noel, You've blown my mind.
It's weird when we think about just how ancient that practice was. Now, the games did not occur every year continually from that point.
Yeah, there was a lull, about a fifteen hundred year lull, as it turns out, and then it was kind of resuscitated by a guy by the name of Pierre Baron de Coubertin. Yes, and Casey Pegram joins us, hello, is that correct?
Yeah, Pierre de coup Dartin.
And that's been Casey on the case from our super producer, Casey Pegram. WHOA you cool with those double sound cure You flipped the script there, my man, I love it.
But no, Pierre who was originally known by Pierre de Fredier, Casey.
Pierre de Fleidy feity flighty.
That's that's why he's here.
He's here for a lot of reasons.
He's here for amazing reasons. So tell us about this guy.
Now that we've jacked up the flow entirely with valuable pronunciation information from mister Casey Pegrim. Yeah, this guy was an educator from France who totally revived the Olympic Games in eighteen ninety six in Greece. Indeed, Ben, as it would be appropriate to do, I guess to carry on that torch that. Yeah, I was in Athens in eighteen ninety six, and by most accounts I've read that one went okay. And then they had one in Paris which was apparently a ship show. And then they had one that is the subject of today's episode in Old Saint Louis, Missouri.
Yes, massurra, Missouri, Missouri got uh ride in or chime in on ridiculous historians local Missouri residents to let us know how you prefer to pronounce.
It, shred us. We welcome it.
I'm having so much fun with that. So it's true. Nol America's first Olympic Games, the first Olympic Games in the US were held in nineteen oh four in Saint Louis or Saint Louis, and they were tied to that year's World Fair, which happened in the same city, and there was even Okay, So before we get too deep into this, folks, things were already starting off on a bizarre, awkward, and terrible foot when the nineteen oh four Olympics moved to Missouri because they were originally supposed to be in the US, but supposed to be in a different city.
Yeah, in the city of Chicago, which I'm very much looking forward to traveling to next weekend to see the band My Bloody Valentine. That's all I'm going to say. Yeah, I'm looking forward to Chicago's a beautiful city. But unfortunately Saint Louis made some problems for Chicago because Saint Louis was already set to host this World's Fair, which had a really interesting name that was not the World's Fair. It was called the Louisiana Purchase Centennial Exhibition. And they were none too happy. The organizers of that little shindig none too happy that the Olympics were going to give them a run for their money during the same period in the summer in Chicago.
So they threatened, according to this.
Article by Nate Demeyo of Memory Palace Fame on Slate, to out Olympics the Olympics, in other words, making it such a big dog and pony show that the Olympics, which was not as widely known at the time its being only the third year, would probably suffer significantly. So Kubertan was like, Okay, I guess you better play ball with Saint Louis. Yeah.
They said specifically that they were going to make the official Olympic events in Chicago look terrible, look pitiful in comparison. And at this time the Baron was still trying ardently, because remember this isn't too far past eighteen ninety six, still trying ardently to resurrect the modern Olympics and give it the credibility it deserved. He wanted to avoid any controversy, and he said he would, you know, for the greater good of the Olympics, back down and award the location to Saint Louis. But the problem was, first off, most people in Europe at that time probably had not heard of Saint Louis at all.
Yeah, he was described as a second tier city, which I think is insulting. Saint Louis is beautiful, but New York it is not.
I mean, I went to Saint Louis recently on some unrelated adventures, and I got to say, it's amazing city, amazing music, amazing barbecue if you like barbecue. But at this time I got that arch right. But at this time, the location there, in what they did describe as a second tier city, was an incredible barrier to athletes, especially European athletes. We have to remember this was before an interstate system, so travel to the American Midwest was a daunting task and almost all of the top European athletes didn't make it, and ultimately fewer than half of the Olympic events that year had even a single entrant who was not from America.
And I want to say I read somewhere I'm sorry for being vague about this, folks, but that America actually scooped up some European athletes and made them part of the American team, or folks that had recently immigrated to America but did not receive citizenship yet, and they were the ones who won many of the medals. And there are countries that are to this day disputing those wins because they basically kind of sniped some of their people and they weren't officially citizens of the United States. So very wild West kind of Olympics here, and for more reasons than one.
Yeah, sort of shooting of shooting from the hip right, going winging it a little bit more than is appropriate. Did we mention the mastermind behind this nol, James Edward Sullivan.
No, we have not, but he's a huge part of the story.
Okay, So James Edward Sullivan, American sports official. He was born in eighteen sixty two. I lived until September nineteen fourteen. He was the chief organizer of these nineteen oh four Summer Olympics, and a lot of the terrible, terrible mistakes that occurred fall upon his shoulders. In this situation. He's the one who is putting out the threats. He's the one who was pushing the baron to move this, and he is one of the reasons that so many disastrous things occurred with the actual events.
He was the organizer of the World's Fair. Correct.
Great question, and it's important that we clarify that point. So James Edward Sullivan is the primary organizer of the nineteen oh four Summer Olympics, but the organizer of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, which we've also seen both ways as either Louisiana Purchase Exhibition or Louisiana Purchase Exposition. The organizer of that stuff, whatever you want to call it, was a guy named David R. Francis. And the problem with this was that the Saint Louis organizers treated the Olympic Games sort of as a side show to the World's Fair.
So the World's Fair is a big deal and very well established at this point, and.
There were other more popular, let's call them cultural exhibits. We're going to be remiss if we don't mention some of the stuff that happened in those exhibits.
Yeah.
Yeah, those were overshadowing the actual Olympic Games and events. And I believe in the nineteen oh four Games the total number of athletes was only six hundred and fifty one, six hundred and forty five men and six women, and.
Yet for some reason it went on for like one hundred and seventy five days, which I thought was bizarre. Let's backtrack just a little bit too, back to the World's Fair. So you were talking about, let's talk about some of the things that made the World's Fair kind of cool. You had, you know, the kind of things you'd think about being at a fair, And on this particular one, they had Abe Lincoln's log cabin from when he was a boy. Okay, guess you wouldn't see that as most fairs. But they also had waffle cones and you know, new fangled contraptions and inventions, and I think this is where like peanut butter was debut Oh.
I'm so glad you mentioned that. Okay, yes, quick interjection. There's a fantastic article but from serious Heats by a guy named Robert Moss. The nineteen oh four World's Fair a turning point for American food. There were a lot of amazing food things that happened here. Allegedly, the first hot dog ever was made in the nineteen or sold in the nineteen oh four World's Fair, when a vendor named Anton Futwanger was giving out sausages to people, but they were too hot for people to hold, and so he had his brother in law bake buns to hold the meat, creating the world's first hot dog. It's important to us through this episode, fellow ridiculous historians, to try to find some pluses. Yeah, but so please go on about the World's Fair. I have this list of amazing food stuff too.
We can keep going with that if you like. I'm just trying to, you know, put a silver lining on this story. I don't know, Yeah, peanut, butter's not enough facil lying for where we're going. We might have told us go ahead and get there. One one last little thing about kober Ten, who, by the way, was the guy who re established the established the International Olympic Committee.
That was his deal, so had the bear.
The Baron, So our third year of this event, after fifteen hundred year lull, the stakes are high. He's kind of strong armed into going to Saint Louis and was so peeved at the whole thing that he actually didn't even show up. He is quoted in saying that he had sort of a predisposition to assuming that the quality of the Olympiad would match the quality of the city. Yeah, so kind of turning his nose up at Saint Louis here.
Let's give him another quote too. That'll get us to I think the meat of this episode. Also, these are the early days of the hamburger. I'm just gonna whenever we get too into too much disturbing stuff, how about we throw in a fun food.
Fetch sure that sounds good? Okay.
So, in addition to his objections to the overall mediocrity or potential for posed by the nineteen oh four Olympics, the Baron also took disapproving note of a spectacle, very problematic spectacle called anthropology. Days before we tell you what those are, before we explore that, let's just go with this quote, he says, referencing these as for that outrage of charade, it will of course lose its appeal when black men, red men, and yellow men learn to run, jump and throw and leave the white men behind them. Think of all the problems with that.
Yes, but at the same time oddly forward thinking compared to the story we're about to tell you, So.
Why don't we just launch write in it's sort of twofold.
It's interesting because even Ben and I off air were a little confused about who was actually hosting these anthropology days. As it turns out it was kind of a partnership between the Olympics and the World's Fair. So I'm a little confused about how this guy, James Sullivan, who kind of was the chief organizer of the Numberlympics, wasn't like given the thumbs up from the Baron himself. But that we haven't quite run across that particular minutia yet. But here's the story. James Sullivan he believed one hundred percent in the utter superiority of white men and wanted very much to put on a display or a charade, as the Baron referred to it, to demonstrate this fact. So there was this thing that was a very strange phenomenon at the beginning of the twentieth century called human zoos, which were sort of like traveling carnivals, or it would be like the equivalent of a freak show or a side show, where indigenous people from places like the Philippines or Africa would be displayed in kind of mocked up versions of their traditional homes, but they would be you know, there's images in this really great article from Timeline called scientists staged a racist Olympics in nineteen oh four to prove white superiority that shows people just gathered around these picket fences and looking at children, men, women, all kind of doing what they would be doing in their villages for example. Right, So Sullivan wanted to take this a step further, and the World's Fair itself had a mocked up Filipino village because at the time, the Philippines was a newly established territory of the United States, so it was they wanted to show their dominance.
Well, yeah, he wanted to legitimize it too, legitimize this belief, which was already at that time not considered controversial. That's when he contacted a doctor W. J. McGee, who was president of the American Anthropological Association and head of the Department of Anthropology at the Saint Louis World's Fair. McGee thought because indigenous people lived in harmony with nature, they were endowed with special strength and abilities that quote, white people simply didn't have hikes. And so he was compelled, perhaps for some different motivations by Sullivan's concept, and they began organizing these anthropology Days, which they sometimes referred to apparently and formally as special Olympics.
Yeah, yeah, not the way we think of that term today.
And you know, McGee did have a scientific background and thought that he was conducting research, but he had this preconceived notion that we mentioned earlier that indigenous people had certain advantages, typically had to do with strength or endurance or things like that, and he wanted to build this hierarchical diagram of genealogy of the human species, of which he thought these indigenous people were at the bottom, because his main concern was in intellect.
And he clearly subscribed to the concept of eugenics and selective breeding, which was alarmingly popular or accepted in the US at that time. So they stacked the odds against these people. They took several people from these exhibitions, like what you mentioned earlier in nol the exhibition featuring people from the Philippines, and they said, well, you'll compete in a special version of Olympic events on August twelfth and thirteenth of that year of nineteen oh four. And all their competitions that they put these people in were European style competitions shot put, high jump, long jump, running the mile, other stuff. But they didn't teach the participants. They didn't tell them a damn thing about what they were supposed to be doing.
Yeah, And I mean, even I a lifelong citizen of these United States, I don't know the rules of of the high jump or the right form or how to do it properly, or you know, I don't.
I really don't.
And then that sounds, you know, like it would be so apparent or intuitive, and it's just not.
There are very specific regulations too, for any professional sporting event. So from what I understand, correct me if this is if this is off, from what I understand, they didn't tell them any there's obviously a language barrier. They didn't tell them anything at most for instance, in the one hundred yard dash or whatever, the participants just sort of got the idea that they were supposed to run, but in many cases they just saw gun fired and were like, what dext yeah, or.
They were just more fascinated with the weapon itself and the loud noise that it made than what it signified, which just seems just so ridiculous and shortsighted to me that they would just assume that these folks would would have the cultural knowledge of how these games work.
That's just bonkers to me.
They also had tennis, which is weird because tennis is something like, look, even if you're skeptical with our explanation here and you think, well, sure, you can just relatively easily explain to someone the basics of something like a high jump or one hundred yard dash. Tennis, I think we can all agree has very specific equipment, rules and strategies. This Anthropology Day's exhibition, in this event, whatever you want to call it, was a huge failure. There's very little notice, so there were not many people even in the crowd to watch, and Sullivan thought at least that the games were somewhat successful for his ulterior motive, because he said, Aha, this proves that these this is a terrible word. But to him, this proves that these quote unquote savages can't play tennis.
Oh cool, good, good job. That's super helpful data there. All of these presuppositions that these guys made were based on the kind of inherent, just thoughtless racism that we take for granted today that most learned people would hopefully not be party too. For example, they assumed that anyone from a nation in Africa, for example, where spears were thrown as a means of hunting and protection and what have you, would automatically be good at throwing a javelin.
You know, yeah, you know what it makes me think of.
It makes me think of There's an episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm where one of Larry's friends has adopted a Chinese baby, and Larry immediately asked them, so, is he like, automatically good at using chopsticks?
Yeah?
I mean, those are horrific things to think. And of course Larry David, we can safely say, is lampooning that and mocking it and does not himself believe it.
But there is another angle here because of the thing you mentioned earlier where it's like, because these folks were closer to nature and did these things as part of their everyday life, it's not just a nurture thing. There's also a nature thing here. Where they assumed that because they had done these things in their day to day they'd be able to immediately one to one translate them to some kind of silly game, and that didn't happen. For example, the folks who tried the javelin that were from these nations that use spears were terrible at it.
Yeah, And I think also there's an important point we have to make about these people. So according to that timeline article that we cited earlier by showshoe Parks, these people were already put in horrific conditions. So more than twenty million people attended the nineteen oh four World's Fair. Right, they saw electricity, they heard the first telephone. They also went to see three thousand people who were placed in these exhibitions, people from the African continent, the Asian continent, and parts of the Americas. But the way these people were forced to live was incredibly was like incredibly dangerous. Regardless of the weather, they would be forced to wear traditional clothing. I'm doing air quotes here, even if it didn't suit the climate. And then, like people were supposed to who were forced to live in that Philippine village would be made to perform traditional rituals that were only supposed to happen seasonally, over and over again to shock or entertain an audience. There were appalling sanitary conditions, and a lot of these people felt that they had nowhere else to go. They were stuck in this alien environment. And imagine being pulled out of that. So your life is already not at its best. And then this Sullivan guy comes with some other people, grabs you, gibbers at you in English, hands you a javelin, and clearly thinks that he is going to prove that not only he, but anyone who looks like him is inherently better than you.
I'm also confused that because he talks about how he had these ideas that they would be superior physically.
So what was he what was he trying to? What was he getting out?
I think it was McGee who thought he could prove specific physical advantages, and it was Sullivan who thought he could prove that what he saw as white people was inherently superior.
So I guess the reason and so confusing to me is because the logic behind literally all of this is utterly convoluted and bizarre.
Yeah, and a lot of that convolution and bizarre nature comes from the fact that it's based on things that are completely wrong.
It's true. And here's an interesting fact too. Nate Demeyo's article enslate. He points out that these folks, though living in what he refers to as quasi captivity, were paid probably not much, and obviously they were living in horrible circumstances. But some of them even had like managers or agents.
You know. It was almost like being a I don't.
Know, Santa Claus impersonator or something. But the problem is a lot of these folks that were in these human zoos were never fully able to assimilate into American culture, right, and they were kind of held back by here, we're giving you an opportunity to not really live but just barely.
Right.
Yeah, And for McGee, the body of data that he wanted to collect from this to prove his wack a do notion of racial hierarchies and certain inherent advantages or disadvantages, he didn't get it. We don't know if that body of data ever existed.
They did give it another go, though there was a second attempt at this unconnected to the Olympic Games, where they did try to teach them the sports. You think that would have been front of mine the first time, but they just seem to have missed that entirely. Yeah, how that one go? Did that any better results?
No?
No?
No?
Yeah.
It turns out if something if you base something on a terrible idea and nonsense the first time you try it, it'll still be a terrible idea, nonsense the second time. While we're at this point, I just want to mention another another fun food fact. I'm still right okay. So apparently at the nineteo four World's Fair, when it was hot, there were very few people interested in this hot tea offered by a guy named Richard Blechton who was the tea commissioner in the India pavilion. And this guy got so desperate that he decided to pour his tea over ice, and supposedly, according to legend, he invented iced tea.
Well then the drink.
Yeah, not the rapper, not the lyrics, only iced tea invented iced tea?
Yeah? Where do we go from here, Ben.
I guess well we should also say that, you know, I think we did mention. I hope he established that the concept of human zoos was not unique at all. Right, you mentioned earlier it wasn't unique at all to the World's Fair. It existed in other parts of the world, in Europe as well. It is better for history, of course, that this proved to be a failure. There were some other first that occurred during the Olympics, so in some ways it wasn't a complete disaster. It was the first time boxing, freestyle wrestling, the kathlon, and dumbbells made their debut in the modern Olympics, right, and luckily James Sullivan would go down in history as the fool he was, which I consider a positive aspect absolutely how so, because he was clearly and categorically proven wrong espousing a belief that was both offensive and incredibly common at the time. So I consider that a win for our species overall.
Yeah, Well, in the spirit of staying ridiculous, because while this racial Shenanigan's is absolutely ridiculous, it's also pretty depressing and quite dark when you think about it.
The idea of human zoos.
It reminds me of that the episode we did about the real human skull that was found in the diorama at a museum and the idea of grave robbing these indigenous people and taking them back to Europe and taxidermizing them culture. Oh, we haven't even mentioned the fact that a lot of this attitude was entirely based on the idea of imperialism of the United States. It was a stat you know, we had we had gotten this territory of the Philippines, we had this Filipino reservation, right, and it was this idea of showing our cultural dominance.
I would say it's I would say it's ultimately descended from the European ideals that the Americans just they didn't invent it.
No, no, no, for sure, but this is a really clear example of, you know, trying to put that on full display. So let's let's let's end with one funny story.
I advanced to end with food facts.
Okay, that's fine. So the next to last thing.
Two folks don't leave completely depressed.
It was kind of depressing too, but in a much more lighthearted, funny way. So the marathon at the Olympics themselves was just utterly disastrous. Uh.
The winner a guy named Thomas Hicks.
He finished in absurdly long three hours and twenty eight minutes, and that is because the conditions were just abhorrent. It was ninety degrees they it was on a road that was covered with dust, and I think according to history dot com, eighteen of the thirty two folks that were racing had to pull out because of sheer exhaustion. Somebody got a stomach hemorrhage and nearly died.
William Garcia of California collapsed and had to be hospitalized because dust had coated his esophagus and ripped his stomach lining.
Oh my god. Yeah, I'm glad we're ending with the food facts.
So yeah, Thomas Hicks, he won with that ridiculously slow time, but only because his assistance kept feeding him doses of eggs and strychnine, egg whites and strych nine and brandy to keep him on his feet.
Yeah, for the at the ten mile mark, they had to start taking care of him. He had begged them for a drink and they refused. They spun his mouth out instead. Strychnine in small doses was common as a stimulant at the time, and I know, weird it sounds, but there were no rules about performance enhancing drugs. But he was the ultimate winner. But did you hear about Fred Laws. He's my favorite guy of Fred Laws. Okay, so this guy Fred Laws LRZ. He leads the starters from the time they fired the gun, but by the first mile, Thomas Hicks hedges ahead, and Lores at the nine mile mark started getting these crazy stomach cramps, and so he decided to hitch a ride in an accompanying car and he waved at his fellow competitors as he ran, and then he rode in the car for eleven miles and then one of Hicks's handlers, one of the strych nine egg white guys, saw Lawyers and ordered him off the course, but Lare said eh, and keV running and finished with the time of under three hours, and the crowd went nuts, and they were like yay an American one. And then someone I think President Theodore Roosevelt's daughter placed a wreath on Lours's head and was about to put the actual metal around his neck when somebody finally busted him. The cheers turned to booze, and we don't know if Laws was sincere when he said this, but he smiled and said, I never intended to accept the honor. I finished only for the sake of a joke. And it's like, really, that's how you let it get that close to a gold medal. I don't know, man, I don't really buy it.
It's a good story though, But Hicks.
Does become the winner, right yep, because he didn't hop in a car for eleven miles.
That's right, he hopped on his feet.
Well, I'm picturing him vomiting constantly, clutching his guts, screaming for water, Yeah, screaming for water, having his little toadies pouring some disgusting mixture down his throat.
You know.
That's how you typically picture a marathon runner, right, right, that's the glory day's picture. So, as we said, there were a lot of food facts that we're pointing to when we entered more difficult parts of this story. I want to give a little bit of a gray lining here because some of those stories, while inspiring, pretty easy to debunk. If you were writing an email now about iced tea again to drink, the truth is that it had been around for decades beforehand. Yeah, I guess if you're the one that got the booth at the World's Fair, you might get the credit in history. But thankfully we've got sites like Serious Eats that do a great job of debunking that stuff. What did they say about the actual origins of ice tea?
Man?
Oh?
Yeah, the actual origins of iced tea, which are interesting on their own, occur at least by eighteen sixty eight, probably way before eighteen sixty eight's like three decades before the World Fair. A widely circulated newspaper piece notes that ice tea with lemon juice is said to be a popular and healthy drink, and has instructions for making it, and it's also numerous cookbooks. So I think a lot of the marketing of World's Fair stuff is just that marketing, and we have to be careful because marketing, you know, is a glitzy version of the truth.
Do you think it wasn't really Abe Lincoln's boyhood cabin that was there? Just some sort of replica?
I don't know.
It also reminds me, you know, all those old medieval counterfeitters, like a Canterbury Tale, who would run around.
With fake reliquaries or partner's tale.
Yeah, like the partner, But we do believe it is important for us to acknowledge these things and realize that in nineteen oh four at the World's Fair, people believe they were on the cusp of scientific innovation. You know that they were on the bleeding edge of technology, and in some ways they were, but their own preconceptions, their own prejudices, their own pre existing notions, limited the scope of their vision. And hopefully that's something that we can learn from in the modern day. Like I'm stretching to make it a little bit of a parable.
Now, you're doing a good job, Ben, You like it, I do. It's a good way to frame it. Yeah, but there you have it. To quote Robert Lamb of stuff to blow your mind our sister podcast.
So yeah, I think we leave it there, right.
Ben, I agreed. We hope that you have enjoyed this episode. We would like to thank you for listening. We've been doing more and more sports related stuff recently.
Have you noticed that, which is weird because I don't think either one of us are into sports, and it's possible that that shows in the episode.
But we come to it with honest hearts.
Honest hearts honest hearts and as fans of history if nothing else. So thank you for checking out the show and taking the strange journey with us. Thank you to our super producer, Casey Pegram, and thank you to Eve's Jeffcoat, who was our research assistant for this episode.
If you want to reach us online, you can check us out on social media at Ridiculous History at Instagram and Twitter and Facebook, or you can join our Facebook community, the Ridiculous Historians. There's always all kinds of fun conversation and memory going on there. If you don't want to do any of that, you can write us an email at Ridiculous at HowStuffWorks dot com and I think we did not yet.
Thank our pal Alex Williams.
Who composed this to Thanks Alex.
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