Columbian Exposition Artifacts the Obama Center Doesn’t Want You To Know About

By Ella Hester

April 20, 2018

Historians are rejoicing while the Obamas are gasping in horror! As the Obama Presidential Center and Library gears up to break ground, archaeologists have found many relics from the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition held in Jackson Park. However, not every found scrap has made it into the headlines. The Obamas have done everything in their power to prevent the following artifacts from making it into the public eye. Thankfully, the Chicago Shady Dealer has your back.

Annie Oakley

Annie Oakley’s Cow-Skin Diaphragm

That’s right, folks! When Little Miss Sure Shot wasn’t breaking sharpshooting records at Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show on the Midway, she was riding the cowboys hard with this cutting-edge birth control over almost every square inch of Jackson Park. There’s a reason they had to burn the whole exhibition to the ground! Sources close to Obama say this find has absolutely shattered the former President’s romanticized perception of Ms. Oakley, and as a result he has radically altered the playlist for his weekly Ethel Merman sing-along sesh (to be featured in the next edition of Rolling Stone). In Annie Get Your Gun, she sang, “I’m quick on the trigger with targets not much bigger / Than a pinpoint”; if the same was true for her lovers, this diaphragm is just the first piece of the puzzle for historians looking to reconstruct Annie’s sexual awakening in the summer of ’93. Keep an eye out for more clues next time you go bird watching in Jackson Park!

H.H. Holmes

H.H. Holmes’ Mustache

How’d the mustache of a serial killer said to be the devil incarnate, buried in Philadelphia in a block of concrete, get here? The implications of the answer are enough to make even our former President Barack Obama quake in his boots. Holmes lured young girls traveling alone to the Columbian Exposition to his hotel of horrors on 63rd and South Wallace in Englewood. But after Holmes’ execution, his mustache seems to have taken on a life of its own. In an interview with the Shady Dealer conducted through pen and paper, the mustache said it has retired from murder and now prefers long strolls along the lake and freaking out the neighborhood dogs. “Also, I really do hope something comes of this Community Benefits Agreement,” the mustache said. That statement frightened Obama even more.

Ida B. Wells

Ida B. Wells’ CBA Pamphlets

It is a well known historical fact that Ida B. Wells and Frederick Douglass handed out pamphlets to exposition-goers protesting the exclusion of African Americans from the World’s Columbian Exposition. But what Obama doesn’t want you to know is that they also pushed for a Community Benefits Agreement (CBA) between the exposition and the surrounding community to guarantee jobs for residents and stability in the neighborhood. The Shady Dealer did some digging in the Regenstein Library Special Collections and found Ida B. Wells’ diary from that time. In it she says, “If they leave the Midway swampier and marshier than before they got here, so help me God…. Director B[urnham] should know better than to leave the neighborhood behind in the dust of all this construction.” Truly inspiring stuff. The Shady Dealer asked an Obama spokesperson about this artifact who stated, “Uhhhh,” fished something out of his pocket, threw it on the ground, and vanished into a puff of smoke.