Born in the early 1880s, Ota Benga was born into the Mbuti people of the African Congo. At the time of his birth, the Congo was under the colonial control of Belgium. Belgium was famous for its cruelty and exploitation while extracting rubber from the Congo during this time period. The Belgian king, King Leopold II, collected massive profits from this colony using forced slave labor from the natives. Atrocities such as beatings, killings, and disfigurement (including the chopping off of hands) were commonplace. Ota Benga was severely affected by the Belgian cruelty; his wife and children were killed by a Belgian militia while he was away hunting. Benga would later be captured by slavers.
Ota Benga was a pygmy. Pygmy peoples are groups that simply have shorter average heights. For instance, Ota Benga, an adult male pygmy, was probably about four feet eleven inches tall. Pygmies were considered rare and unusual at the turn of the century, which ultimately led to a desire to include them in the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair. Benga was purchased alongside a group of other African pgymies as a part of an exhibit by a man named Samuel Phillips Verner. The Africans were a main attraction at the fair, but were treated as fascinating animals in a zoo then human beings. They were such a big hit that Verner would win an award in anthropology at the fair.
After the fair, Benga and the others went with Verner back to the Congo. The others would leave to rejoin their tribe, but Benga opted to stay with him and go back to America. After a brief stint at the American Natural History Museum, Benga eventually went to the Bronx Zoo in New York City. Allowed to roam the grounds, Benga lodged in the zoo in the Monkey House alongside primates. Controversy erupted. Some supported the display based on the widely held belief among white-society that those of color were less evolved and less human. Others denounced the arrangement emphasizing the humanity of Benga. Eventually, Benga was released from the zoo and relocated.
Benga would wind up in Lynchburg, Virginia where he was tutored in English and given American clothes in an attempt to allow him to fit into society. He briefly went to elementary school before leaving behind his education and working at a tobacco factory. Depressed and unable to return to his home in Africa, Benga committed suicide at the age of 32 on March 20, 1916. He shot himself with a revolver in the woods behind the house in which he was living. A biography of Ota Benga was authored by Phillips Verner Bradford, the grandson of Samuel Phillips Verner, in the early 1990s.
I hope Ota Benga’s story makes you cringe. A human being of color, unusual because of his small stature, bought by other human beings and put in an exhibit, treated as an animal in a zoo to gawk at. There was even a debate about his humanity, as if it were debatable. It was a callous lack of respect for basic human dignity. By ignoring his humanity, those outside of the cage were truly the animals. I ask you to consider the cages we still erect today and the animals we may become if we are not careful.
