IN the early 1900s Ota Benga, a slave imported into the United States from Congo, was exhibited in cages along with primates. Before his US odyssey, the colonialists had killed his wife and two children. Benga, an Mbuti (Congo pygmy), was featured in an exhibit at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1904, and in a human zoo exhibit in 1906 at the Bronx Zoo. Benga had been purchased from African slave traders by Samuel Phillips Verner , a missionary and exhibitionist. He was kept at the Bronx zoo before and after being exhibited in the zoo’s Monkey House. Except for a brief visit with Verner to Africa after the close of the St. Louis Fair, Benga was…
Source: Nigerian Tribune
