In addition, crowd events were reduced in 1917-1918 because of the Spanish flu pandemic, which is estimated to have killed millions of people worldwide.

In the 1950s, Medgar Evers, an African-American civil rights activist, led efforts to racially integrate the event.

[2] In 2020, during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, the fair operated under strict measures to try to protect public health.

Attendees were asked to wear masks and to practice social distancing to lessen transmission of the serious respiratory disease.

It caused more than a million deaths in the United States over the next few years.