Like most Washington University students, I am used to the sights and sounds of construction. When I was greeted by the beeping of reversing trucks near Francis Field earlier this week and turned to see a massive sculpture of interlocking Olympic rings, I initially dismissed it as another attempt to impress prospective students. However, this infrastructural enhancement actually bears a dark historical significance that the Washington University community must recognize.

The 16 by 9-feet sculpture of intertwining Olympic rings, known as an “Olympic Spectacular,” will rest permanently on Francis Field. The installation, which serves to commemorate the 1904 Olympic Games held on Wash. U.’s campus, is the result of a partnership between the University and the St. Louis Sports Commission. Chancellor Mark Wrighton stated ahead of Wash. U.’s “Ringing in the Rings” ceremony on Sept. 28 that the University “could not be more proud to be the home of this important reminder of St. Louis’ Olympic legacy and its connection to the international community.” However, the sculpture also recalls the less-known legacy of a whitewashed 1904 Olympic Games featuring a profoundly racist spectacle called “Anthropology Days.”

The 1904 games served as a relatively lackluster corollary to the St. Louis World’s Fair held in Forest Park earlier that year. The games were overshadowed by the World’s Fair and poorly attended, both by spectators and athletes; likely due to tensions in Europe over the Russo-Japanese War, many athletes chose not to attend. As a result, approximately 85 percent of the games’ participants hailed from the United States.

However, the games exhibited more than a mere lack of ethnic diversity; they actively fostered racist and colonial notions of American white supremacy. On Aug. 12 and 13, 1904, the organizers of the Olympic Games partnered with the World’s Fair to host Anthropology Days, a “special Olympics,” in which “natives” would compete alongside their “civilized’ American and European counterparts. Chief Organizers William J. McGee and James Sullivan drew the participants from the World’s Fair ethnic displays, which featured “savages” imported from countries around the world. These exhibitions made up a “human zoo” where white spectators could witness the “backwardness” of Central African pygmies, indigenous people from Mexico, Turks and Syrians, among others. Anthropology Days, in its attempt to measure the relative athletic ability of these “natives,” played into tropes of racist pseudoscience that were popular in the United States and abroad at the time.

Anthropology Days began with a day of European-style sporting events, to which the foreign competitors had never been exposed and thus fared poorly. The second day included more “culturally appropriate” events such as a tree-climbing contest and mud-throwing; however, to the dismay of McGee and Sullivan, most “native” participants struggled in these events as well. Very few spectators turned out to watch, and Anthropology Days was deemed a failure. The event, though it occurred over a century ago, smacks of the same racism that has consistently permeated Olympic discourse ever since.

The 1904 Olympic Games served—at least partially and at most completely—to further the burgeoning American imperial project. True to American history, they capitalized on black and brown people to project a sanitized, colonial ideal of global whiteness. Wash. U.’s choice to neglect this troubling reality in service of the University’s aesthetic and prestige is disappointing.

As students, it is our job to call out the forms of revisionist history and systemic racism that consistently fly under the radar on our campus. It is the particular responsibility of the University’s white student population to do so, in order to create an environment where students of color on campus feel affirmed and safe. The University, as a potential hub for interracial and cross-cultural dialogue, needs to be a place where students of all races and ethnicities feel seen and where their histories are validated—even if that means recognizing the University’s own racially fraught past.

Wrighton lauded the rings as a “beautiful and permanent tangible reminder” of the games which will likely serve as a popular meeting spot for students. In reality, the rings will serve as a permanent, tangible reminder of St. Louis’ and Washington University’s deeply racist past and present. I implore Wash. U.’s student body to consider the real history of the 1904 Olympic Games before dismissing the sculpture out of hand (as I initially did) or establishing it as the hub of student social life it is slated to become.