Ota Benga (ca. 1881-1916) was a 23-year-old Congolese who was featured in a 1906 human zoo exhibit at the Bronx Zoo, which was intended to promote the theory that humans evolved from primates and scientific racism.
Ota Benga (or Bi, which means ‘friend’ in his language) was born around 1881 in what is now known as the Democratic Republic of the Congo. At the time, the area was under control of the Belgians, who plundered the land for ivory and rubber. Upon returning from gathering ivory one day, Ota Benga found that his village had been destroyed and his wife and two children murdered.
Sold in the slave market, Ota Benga was purchased by Samuel Phillips Verner, who had agreed to buy Twa for the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair. Following the World’s Fair, Verner kept his promise to return Ota Benga and others to their country. But all of the members of Ota Benga’s tribe had been annihilated during his time away and he asked Verner to take him back to the United States.
Verner took Ota Benga to the Bronx Zoo in New York in 1906 to find him a place to live. Ota Benga was allowed to roam the zoo grounds and help feed the animals. He spent some of his time in the “Monkey House” exhibit, and the zoo encouraged him to hang his hammock there and to shoot his bow and arrow at a target.
September 8, 1906, marked the first day of the exhibit. A sign on the exhibit read:
The African Pigmy, “Ota Benga.”
Age, 23 years. Height, 4 feet 11 inches.
Weight, 103 pounds. Brought from the
Kasai River, Congo Free State, South Cen-
tral Africa, by Dr. Samuel P. Verner. Ex-
hibited each afternoon during September.
Black Baptist ministers protested the exhibit and Ota Benga was removed from the exhibit. James H. Gordon said, “Our race, we think, is depressed enough, without exhibiting one of us with the apes.” Dr. R. MacArthur added, “The person responsible for this exhibition degrades himself as much as he does the African.”
“Instead of making a beast of this little fellow, he should be put in school for the development of such powers as God gave to him. It is too bad that there is not some society like the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. We send our missionaries to Africa to Christianize the people, and then we bring one here to brutalize him.”
After the exhibit ended, the ministers’ group moved Ota Benga to the Howard Colored Orphan Asylum in Brooklyn where he stayed for a short time before relocating to Lynchburg, Virginia, where his teeth, which he had filed to points in the Congo, were capped and he dressed in American-style clothes. Ota Benga briefly attended classes at the Virginia Theological Seminary and College, but he was more at home discarding his clothes and roaming the woods with his bow and arrow.
He discontinued his formal education and began working at a Lynchburg tobacco factory. His small size proved a valuable asset because he could climb the poles to get the tobacco leaves without having to use a ladder. He became known as ‘Otto Bingo’ and would tell his life story in exchange for sandwiches and root beer.
On March 20, 1916, Ota Benga built a fire, broke the caps off his teeth, performed a final tribal dance and then shot himself in the heart. The death certificate listed his name as ‘Otto Bingo’. However, his final resting place remains a mystery.
Ota Benga Alliance, The Pygmy in the Zoo
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Concrete Loop will feature ‘Black History Spotlights’ each week. These features honor black people through the years and submissions are welcome.
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Actually “pgymy” is a derogatory word…it’s equivalent to the “n-word”…
Their proper name is “Twa” and they were among the first people on the planet. “Pygmy” is a name the Twa people detest and it really shouldn’t be used anymore…
what is up with all of the white people advocates? This is a Black site, so we say things about BLACK people. God! And the reason all of those horrible things are happening in DARFUR is because of European invasion and supply. And it still has not been throughly proven that the snipers commited those crimes, but even if they did it was really a shocker to find out they were black wasn’t it? AND since when do they teach BLACK hISTORY IN SCHOOL?THIS IS DIRECTED TOWARDS THE PERSON WHO SAID WE SHOULD LEARN MORE ABOUT OTHER CULTURES BESIDES BLACK AND WHITE? I LEARNED WHITE HISTORY ALL DAY, WITH MARTIN AND MALCOLM IN FEB. AND CINCO DE MAYO IN MAY. LET OTHER PEOPLE FIGHT THEIR OWN FIGHT…BECAUSE WE FIGHT FOR OURS AND EVERYONE ELSE TRIES TO REAP THE BENEFITS WHILE HATING US AT THE SAME TIME. YOU KNOW, THEY WANT TO GET CLOSER TO BEING WHITE. CONCRETELOOP , YOU SCORED BIG POINTS FOR THESE POSTS THOUGH!
Awsome read, keep the stories coming please!
#121: Thanks for the info. You truly learn something new every day.
Peace and blessings,
J. Dakar
wow, ive learned something new, once again.
This is real history and information like this should be incorporated into text-books everywhere, instead of the sugar-coated stories the feel obliged to tell students.
It’s very disturbing for me to hear this, but I am not surprised. Thanks for bringing it to my attention CL. Maybe this will further others to do some research into other stories as well. Cheers!
I am congolese and I am very pleased to see that some black oriented media actually takes time to look into very important history factsn that should never be forgotten.
Thank you concrete loop
Wow!!! I truly learned something new on that one. Extra interesting for me being from VA and having friends up in Lynchburg.
Wow I get so much from this story. Point A they really tried to dehumanize this african more overtly by sticking him in a Got Damn zoo!. Point B we tried to americanize him and he wasnt feeling that. I like how he stayed true to his culture and his heritage its just sad that it may have caused a turmoil within that lead to suicide. May his soul rest in peace. (if he could stay true to his culture back then thats a big accomplishment because i know too many phony black people today)
I credit you CL for my expanding knowledge!!!!
It is amazing what has happened and what continues to happen. No race is greater than any other. We are all amazing human beings. We choose to be different from each other and hurt eachother. But that has nothing to do with the skin color that happens to drape our bodies. It is the fault of the society in which we live. If more people stood up for what was right, instead of spouting off what they believe is right, then people might get better.
Whites are still on every continent doing evil. Is any other race? I don’t think so.
You should read some more, the whole world knows that most Americans have no idea on what’s going on in the world. Yes, skincolour has everything to do with it. Every African country has been colonized. The majority of Asian countries have been colonized. South America was not latin before the Spanish people went there and started killing natives.Even Australia and New-Zealand! The aboriginals forced away from their homes. How long ago do you think this is? All in the 20th century. From the 50ies till the 90ies they were official colonies. Oh my God, you don’t know HALF of what whites have done.
If you were more educated, you wouldn’t dare to disagree.
And the white man owes you alot! He brought you there don’t you see. And he’s still surpressing you.
Don’t trust white people, you don’t have to judge them. But don’t ever trust them.
That is sick what they did to that man…
thanks for giving him the spotlight!
He was buried in an unmarked grave, records show, in the black section of the Old City Cemetery, near his benefactor, Gregory Hayes. At some point, however, both went missing. Local oral history indicates that Hayes and Ota Benga were eventually moved from the Old Cemetery to White Rock Cemetery, a burial ground that fell into disrepair.
info from http://www.wikipedia.org