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Ota Benga (Bradford and Blume (1992), p. 54. – March 20, 1916) was a Mbuti people (Congo Pygmies) man, known for being featured in an exhibit at the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis, Missouri, and as a human zoo exhibit in 1906 at the Bronx Zoo. Benga had been purchased from native African slave traders by Samuel Phillips Verner, a businessman searching for African people for the exhibition, who took him to the United States. While at the Bronx Zoo, Benga was allowed to walk the grounds before and after he was exhibited in the zoo's Monkey House. Benga was placed in a cage with an orangutan, regarded as both an offense to his humanity and a promotion of social Darwinism.
To enhance the primitive image and presumably protect himself if need be from the ape, he was given a functional bow and arrow. He used this instead to shoot at visitors who mocked him and partially as a result of this the exhibition was ended."The Language Of Genes" by Steve Jones, p. 197. Except for a brief visit to Africa with Verner after the close of the St. Louis fair, Benga lived in the United States, mostly in Virginia, for the rest of his life.
African-American newspapers around the nation published editorials strongly opposing Benga's treatment. Robert Stuart MacArthur, spokesman for a delegation of black churches, petitioned New York City Mayor George B. McClellan Jr. for his release from the Bronx Zoo. In late 1906, the mayor released Benga to the custody of James H. Gordon, who supervised the Howard Colored Orphan Asylum in Brooklyn.
In 1910, Gordon arranged for Benga to be cared for in Lynchburg, Virginia, where he paid for his clothes and to have his sharpened teeth capped. This would enable Benga to be more readily accepted in local society. Benga was tutored in English and began to work at a Lynchburg tobacco factory.
He tried to return to Africa, but the outbreak of World War I in 1914 stopped all passenger ship travel. Benga developed depression and died by suicide in 1916.
In 1904, American businessman and explorer Samuel Phillips Verner traveled to Africa, under contract from the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, to bring back an assortment of pygmies to be part of an exhibition. Verner came across Benga while en route to a Twa peoples pygmy village visited previously. He purchased Benga from the Bashilele slave traders, giving them a pound of salt and a bolt of cloth in exchange. Verner later claimed he had rescued Benga from cannibals.
The two spent several weeks together before reaching the Batwa village. The villagers did not trust the muzungu ("white man"). Verner was unable to recruit any villagers to join him for travel to the United States until Benga said that the muzungu had saved his life, and spoke of the bond that had grown between them and his own curiosity about the world Verner came from. Four Batwa, all male, ultimately decided to accompany them. Verner also recruited other Africans who were not pygmies: five men from the Kuba Kingdom, including the son of King Ndombe, ruler of the Bakuba; and other related peoples.
Verner eventually arranged for Benga to stay in a spare room at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City while he was tending to other business. Verner negotiated with the curator Henry Bumpus over the presentation of his acquisitions from Africa and potential employment. While Bumpus was put off by Verner's request of what he thought was the prohibitively high salary of $175 a month and was not impressed by the man's credentials, he was interested in Benga. Benga initially enjoyed his time at the museum, where he was given a Southern-style linen suit to wear when he entertained, but he became homesick for his own culture.
In 1992 the writers Bradford and Blume imagined his feelings:
What at first held his attention now made him want to flee. It was maddening to be inside – to be swallowed whole – so long. He had an image of himself, stuffed, behind glass, but somehow still alive, crouching over a fake campfire, feeding meat to a lifeless child. Museum silence became a source of torment, a kind of noise; he needed birdsong, breezes, trees.
The disaffected Benga attempted to find relief by exploiting his employers' presentation of him as a 'savage'. He tried to slip past the guards as a large crowd was leaving the premises; when asked on one occasion to seat a wealthy donor's wife, he pretended to misunderstand, instead hurling the chair across the room, just missing the woman's head. Meanwhile, Verner was struggling financially and had made little progress in his negotiations with the museum. He soon found another home for Benga.
The events leading to his "exhibition" alongside Dohong were gradual: Benga 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. On the first day of the exhibit, September 8, 1906, visitors found Benga in the Monkey House.
Soon, a sign on the exhibit read:
The African Pygmy, "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.
Hornaday considered the exhibit a valuable spectacle for visitors and was supported by Madison Grant, Secretary of the New York Zoological Society, who lobbied to put Ota Benga on display alongside apes at the Bronx Zoo. A decade later, Grant became prominent nationally as a racial anthropologist and eugenics.
African-American clergymen immediately protested to zoo officials about the exhibit. Said James H. Gordon,
Our race, we think, is depressed enough, without exhibiting one of us with the apes ... We think we are worthy of being considered human beings, with souls.
Gordon thought the exhibit was hostile to Christianity and was effectively a promotion of Darwinism:
The Darwinian theory is absolutely opposed to Christianity, and a public demonstration in its favor should not be permitted.
A number of clergymen backed Gordon. In defense of the depiction of Benga as a lesser human, an editorial in the New York Times suggested:
We do not quite understand all the emotion which others are expressing in the matter. ... It is absurd to make moan over the imagined humiliation and degradation Benga is suffering. The pygmies ... are very low in the human scale, and the suggestion that Benga should be in a school instead of a cage ignores the high probability that school would be a place ... from which he could draw no advantage whatever. The idea that men are all much alike except as they have had or lacked opportunities for getting an education out of books is now far out of date.
After the controversy, Benga was allowed to roam the grounds of the zoo. In response to the situation, as well as verbal and physical prods from the crowds, he became more mischievous and somewhat violent.Smith (1998). See chapter on Ota Benga. Around this time, an article in the New York Times quoted Robert Stuart MacArthur as saying, "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."
The zoo finally removed Benga from the grounds. Verner was unsuccessful in his continued search for employment, but he occasionally spoke to Benga. The two had agreed that it was in Benga's best interests to remain in the United States despite the unwelcome spotlight at the zoo.
Toward the end of 1906, Benga was released into Reverend Gordon's custody.
So that he could more easily be part of local society, Gordon arranged for Benga's teeth to be capped and bought him American-style clothes. He received tutoring from Lynchburg poet Anne Spencer in order to improve his English, and began to attend elementary school at the Baptist Seminary in Lynchburg. He reportedly met W.E.B Du Bois and Booker T. Washington through Spencer.
Once he felt his English had improved sufficiently, Benga discontinued his formal education. He began working at a Lynchburg tobacco factory, and began to plan a return to Africa.
Benga was buried in an unmarked grave in the black section of the Old City Cemetery, near his benefactor, Gregory Hayes. At some point, the remains of both men went missing. Local oral history indicates that Hayes and Benga were eventually moved from the Old Cemetery to White Rock Hill Cemetery, a burial ground that later fell into disrepair. Benga received a historic marker in Lynchburg in 2017.
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