Ota Benga
Ota Benga was a pygmy man who was dehumanized by Darwinian racism and was placed on display alongside an orangutan at the Bronx Zoo in 1906. He lived in the Kasai region[1] in Congo, but lost his family in a mishap. A businessman named Samuel Phillips Verner went to Africa in 1904 to bring pygmies for exhibition and found Ota. Verner brought him to the United States in the summer of 1906.[2] Ota was handed over to the American Museum of Natural History in New York and was later transported to the Bronx Zoo. The director of the zoo William Temple Hornaday,[3] in a bold deployment of Social Darwinism,[4] displayed Ota in a cage at the Monkey House[5][1] with an orangutan.[5] A sign was placed in the front of the cage which stated Ota's name, height, weight etc. as in the case of animals in a zoo.[3]
Black clergies protested against this display and ultimately the exhibition was closed. On September 27, 1906, Ota was transferred to the Howard Colored Orphan Asylum, a church-sponsored orphanage.[6] Clergyman James H. Gordon condemned this exhibition which was aimed for promoting Darwinism and called the dehumanization of Ota Benga hostile to Christianity.[7] On March 20, 1916, Ota committed suicide by shooting himself with a stolen revolver.[6]
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 Fatimah Tobing Rony (1996). The Third Eye: Race, Cinema, and Ethnographic Spectacle. Duke University Press, p157. ISBN 0822318407.
- ↑ Haviland et. al. (2005). Cultural Anthropology: The Human Challenge. Thomson Wadsworth, p81. ISBN 0534624871.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 Bernth Lindfors (1999). Africans on Stage. Indiana University Press, p192. ISBN 0253212456.
- ↑ Karl Kroeber, Clifton B. Kroeber (2003). Ishi in Three Centuries. U of Nebraska Press, p43. ISBN 0803227574.
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 Lee D. Baker (1998). From Savage to Negro. University of California Press, p72. ISBN 0520211685.
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 Karl Kroeber, Clifton B. Kroeber (2003). Ishi in Three Centuries. U of Nebraska Press, p44. ISBN 0803227574.
- ↑ The Scandal at the Zoo