100 Years Ago Today, Ota Benga, A Black Man Held in the Bronx Zoo as ‘Missing Link,’ Ended His Life

[hand2handking]

[h1]  100 Years Ago Today, Ota Benga, A Black Man Held in the Bronx Zoo as ‘Missing Link,’ Ended His Life[/h1]
100 years ago, on March 20, 1916, Ota Benga took a gun and fired a bullet into his own heart, ending the short and tragic life of the “missing link” from Africa.

His treatment at the hands of so-called gentlemen from New York’s Bronx Zoo and the 1904 World’s Fair in St. Louis, Missouri came in the height of the eugenics movement, forty years after the end of (legal) slavery in America.

Today, Benga is remembered for his sacrifice in documentaries and on social media networks like Twitter, a martyr for the cause to end racism.

The 32-year old Mbuti man from along the Kasai River in what is now the Democratic Republic of Congo stood just four feet, eleven inches tall and had teeth filed to sharp points, which was reportedly a tradition for his tribe.

His early life in the forests of Belgian Congo were violent and his wife and two children were killed by the Force Publique.

Samuel Phillips Verner, an American businessman in Africa tasked with acquiring pygmies for a “cultural evolution”  display at the World’s Fair’s Louisiana Purchase Exposition, encountered Benga in 1904.

How Verner came to “acquire”  Benga is unclear, with the “pioneering”  Presbyterian missionary claiming to have “saved”  him from a cannibalistic tribe who had kidnapped him.

Using Benga as a recruitment tool who could downplay the rightfully-distru****l attitude about white men, Verner managed to find more natives and brought them all to the US to be part of the exposition’s human displays.

The controversial exhibit showed real humans from a number of “exotic”  ethnicities dressed in their native gear on a staged reproduction of their homes.

He returned to Africa after the fair and married for the second time, but came back to the US when his new wife died of a snakebite.

Verner got him a place to live inside at the American Museum of Natural History in New York where he was "free to roam" until he threw a chair at Florence Guggenheim and was relocated to the Bronx Zoo.

On a dark day in 1906, 40 years after the abolishment of slavery, Benga was billed as the “missing link”, on display in the Bronx Zoo cage alongside a monkey.

Crowds flocked to see the sight which entertained and disgusted in equal measure.

The secretary of the zoo at the time was eugenicist Madison Grant, whose writings on the “dangers”  of “inferior”  races outbreeding and mixed breeding with Caucasians earned him a letter of thanks from Adolf Hitler.

Despite the zoo claiming Benga was “employed”, he was never paid for his work in which he assisted employees in their duties.

Noting his popularity with visitors and his affection for the monkey enclosure, Benga was encouraged step by step to take up residency with the monkeys.

Soon his hammock was in an empty cage and a target was set up for his bow and arrow, ensuring he rarely needed to leave. He was now one of the zoo’s most popular exhibits.

The New York Times wrote, “he is probably enjoying himself as well as he could anywhere in his country, and it is absurd to make moan over the imagined humiliation and degradation he is suffering.”

There was also disgust expressed at Benga’s display, with a reader of The New York Globe writing: “I lived in the south several years, and consequently am not overfond of the negro, but believe him human. I think it a shame that the authorities of this great city should allow such a sight as that witnessed at the Bronx Park — a negro boy on exhibition in a monkey cage.”

Days later, the exhibit came to an end when members of the Colored Baptist Ministers Conference protested what they called “degrading”.

“We think we are worthy of being considered human beings, with souls,”  the committee wrote.

Benga was removed from the enclosure, but was now famous for the wrong reasons.

Still “resident”  at the zoo, now “free to roam”  again, crowds followed the man, jeering and shouting at him.

He then moved to Lynchburg, Virginia, where his teeth were capped and his name changed to Otto Bingo, his American nickname.

He attended school for a short time until he felt his English was sufficient and took up work at a tobacco factory.

Soon he pined for his home in Africa, but a return was not likely due to the outbreak of World War I preventing passenger ship travel.

On March 20, 1916, he removed the caps from his teeth, built a ceremonial fire, and with a stolen gun, shot himself in what was likely a broken heart.

Benga was buried in an unmarked grave in Lynchburg, but his legacy lives on to remind us of man’s potential brutality to man.

http://thefreethoughtproject.com/10...k-man-held-bronx-zoo-missing-link-ended-life/

thoughts? 

 

[sea manup]

saw this posted on fb and thought "wonder if H2H is going to make a thread about this today"

 

[hand2handking]

 
saw this posted on fb and thought "wonder if H2H is going to make a thread about this today"

wonder no more

thoughts? 

 

[Mark Antony]

Ms Baartman Ms Baartman.

 

[Nawzlew]

You didn't learn about this in your history class?

Asians, natives, people with birth defects, the crippled were all "exhibited" in these zoos.

Your thoughts?

 

[gil23]

You didn't learn about this in your history class?

Asians, natives, people with birth defects, the crippled were all "exhibited" in these zoos.

Your thoughts?

he always just plays the race card

 

[hand2handking]

You didn't learn about this in your history class?

Asians, natives, people with birth defects, the crippled were all "exhibited" in these zoos.

Your thoughts?

no my history classes were all white history

he always just plays the race card

yes i play "the race card" all the time, every chance i get

because thats what this is right? point fingers at me instead of racism 

 

[doublemesh96]

i have a question why the **** did you feel it necessary to make a thread of this?

if you want a list of atrocities white folks have committed i got a loooooooong list for you.

you can make a new thread every second. 

 

[Nawzlew]

You didn't learn about this in your history class?


Asians, natives, people with birth defects, the crippled were all "exhibited" in these zoos.


Your thoughts?

no my history classes were all white history

he always just plays the race card

yes i play "the race card" all the time, every chance i get

because thats what this is right? point fingers at me instead of racism 

What history classes did you take in college?

 

[hand2handking]

 

pm me the list

and the reason for the thread is the 100th anniversary of this man taking his own life

 

[hand2handking]

What history classes did you take in college?

i took white history 101 and 102

 

[RIP sleazyy]

You didn't learn about this in your history class?

Asians, natives, people with birth defects, the crippled were all "exhibited" in these zoos.

Your thoughts?

Did not know this honestly. That's wild.

Humans are ****** up man.

You didn't learn about this in your history class?

Asians, natives, people with birth defects, the crippled were all "exhibited" in these zoos.

Your thoughts?

he always just plays the race card

lol

 

[Nawzlew]

What history classes did you take in college?

i took white history 101 and 102

Oh shut up.

Why didn't you take African American history? Hell I learned about this stuff in detail when I took Asian American History.

It's up to you to take these classes man.

 

[hand2handking]

sp ur asian amaerican history class talked about this guy? 

or the asians they put in zoos?

 

[nawghtyhare]

i have a question why the **** did you feel it necessary to make a thread of this?

if you want a list of atrocities white folks have committed i got a loooooooong list for you.

you can make a new thread every second. 

I think we should just make a GIANT thread called "white folks atrocities thread"
And everything they do wrong can go in that thread
I'm serious btw
Anything they do or have done can go in there
H2H what u think???

 

[polymerase]

Learned about this in an Imperialism and Colonialism course in college, they had human zoos like it in Europe with all different type of people. Pretty wild stuff that wasn't really all too long ago.

 

[hand2handking]

H2H what u think???

i think its a stupid idea and a way of limiting ppl's exposure to racism

 

[sea manup]

i have a question why the **** did you feel it necessary to make a thread of this?

if you want a list of atrocities white folks have committed i got a loooooooong list for you.

you can make a new thread every second. 

I think we should just make a GIANT thread called "white folks atrocities thread"
And everything they do wrong can go in that thread
I'm serious btw
Anything they do or have done can go in there
H2H what u think???

Official "Thoughs?" Thread

 

[nawghtyhare]

Whateve's

 

[Nawzlew]

sp ur asian amaerican history class talked about this guy? 

or the asians they put in zoos?

Not this guy in particular, but yes, we talked about everybody that was put in these zoos.

I also took a class on Post-Reconstruction USA where it talked a lot about this stuff.

Take some time. Take these classes. Don't let school control your education. You're gonna have to want to take these classes and get educated.

 

[hand2handking]

well im glad ur so educated

but there may be those among ur NT brethren that arent familiar

i hope thats a fair assumption for i dont have the education that you do

 

[kvsm23vs24]

I didn't know about him exactly. But just atrocities similar.

 

[Nawzlew]

well im glad ur so educated

but there may be those among ur NT brethren that arent familiar

i hope thats a fair assumption for i dont have the education that you do

Nah man, it's not like that at all.

I'm saying there's always a choice to take these classes. When you said you just took "white history", to me it seemed you didn't know there were options other than that, but there are.

 

[hand2handking]

i was being sarcastic, i dont think there are any colleges that call their history classes "white history"

id say the real issue w u is expecting a school to really teach about these things

you should be advocating for ppl to educate themselves and seek out this information

 

[bendover]

well im glad ur so educated.

... i dont have the education that you do

LOL
I'm glad you can finally accept it.
All you do is rant on an Internet forum.
If your REALLY that interested in these type of articles, take a class, write some essays, get a degree in it and stop wondering what everyone else's "thoughts" are
[emoji]128514[/emoji][emoji]128514[/emoji][emoji]128514[/emoji][emoji]128514[/emoji][emoji]128514[/emoji]