ABSTRACT
Heading the enterprise was David R. Francis, a former grain broker who had served as mayor of Saint Louis, governor of Missouri, and secretary of the interior in Grover Cleveland's second administration. At a meeting of the Saint Louis Businessmen's League in 1896, Francis won acceptance of the idea, first proposed by the directors of the Missouri Historical Society, to hold an exposition commemorating the centenary of the Louisiana Purchase. After receiving assurances that the management of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition planned to make anthropology the heart of their fair, McGee left his troubles at the BAE behind and eagerly accepted the directors' offer to take charge of the Anthropology Department. The course, appropriately titled "The Louisiana Purchase Exposition Class in Ethnology," attracted approximately thirty "society" coeds from the University of Chicago as well as a number of Saint Louis schoolteachers.
