Ota Benga (c. 1883 - 1916)
If any one individual can lay claim to being the face of the human zoo, it's surely the pygmy Ota Benga ...
Purchased from African slave traders by the missionary and anthropologist Samuel Phillips Verner, Benga was taken to the United States and featured in an exhibit at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition (1904), before, two years later, becoming a popular sensation at the Bronx Zoo.
Although required to report to the monkey house at showtime, Benga was otherwise given the freedom of the zoological grounds. However, often subject to verbal and physical goading from the crowds Benga would sometimes become aggressive, thereby reinforcing the stereotype of Africans as untamed savages, who were, as a New York Times editorial informed its readers, very low in the human scale.
Whilst campaigners who opposed Benga's treatment petitioned the New York City mayor for his release, defenders of his role at the zoo pointed out that he had, in a sense, fulfilled the American dream by becoming something of star. He even had celebrity friends, including the Apache Indian chief Geronimo.
It was a shit life in some respects - but hey, it was still showbiz and Benga initially seemed to delight in his role and was excited to see his name in the newspapers. He also liked the fact that he was able to charge visitors for photographs and collect tips after a performance, thus making him complicit in his own exploitation.*
Alas, moral crusaders are nothing if not tenacious: and so, in late 1906, the mayor ordered that Benga be taken into custody by Reverend James M. Gordon, supervisor of a church-sponsored asylum in Brooklyn for coloured orphans. Gordon argued that Benga should be fully valued as a human being and condemned the exhibit as not only degrading, but an anti-Christian promotion of Darwinism to boot.
Benga spent four years at the orphanage, before Gordon arranged for him to be cared for by a respectable Christian family in Virginia.
Ota was given a nice new wardrobe of western-style clothes and had his teeth - which had been filed into sharp points in his youth in a traditional manner - capped, so as not to frighten the locals. He was also taught English and given a job at a tobacco factory, where his co-workers called him Bingo and rewarded him with sandwiches and bottles of root beer for regaling them with stories about his life.
To paraphrase Henry Hill, Benga became an average nobody who got to live the rest of his life like a schnook. Thus, when plans of returning to Africa were frustrated due to the outbreak of the First World War, it's little wonder that he fell into a deep depression.
On 20 March, 1916, Benga built a ceremonial fire, chipped off the caps from his teeth, and shot himself through the heart with a stolen pistol. He was buried in an unmarked grave in the negro section of the Old City Cemetery.
* Note: I appreciate this is a controversial claim, but don't see why we should completely strip Benga of his agency and ability to give consent. It's important to note, for example, that prior to taking up his residency at the Bronx Zoo, Benga returned with Verner to the Congo, but quickly discovered he couldn't stand his old way of life and so voluntarily returned to the US. Arguments to do with alienation and false consciousness are interesting, but not entirely convincing (not least of all because, ultimately, I don't subscribe to the fiction of free will).
Part 1 of this post on the myth of the Great Family of Man can be read by clicking here.
Part 2 of this post on the case of Sara Baartman (the Hottentot Venus) can be read by clicking here.
Ota Benga at the Bronx Zoo (1906)
