Kathleen James-Chakraborty – Architectural History & Theory Seminar Series, Edinburgh School of Architecture & Landscape Architecture

The Belgian Pavilion for the World of Tomorrow world’s fair held in New York in 1939 and 1940 was designed in part to advertise the riches it was reaping from its colonial administration of the Congo.  The government-in-exile “gave” it to Virginia Union University in Richmond, Virginia, where it still stands.  Although it is not clear that this gesture ever generated support for the Belgians from the university’s African American staff and students, the building did play a key role in the Civil Rights movement in the former capital of the Confederacy, hosting five speeches by Dr. Martin Luther King