Behind Bars: Ota Benga and the Bronx Zoo

Note: This essay is one of 3 produced during my internship last year at the Law Library of Congress. I used Library resources to conduct research on a topic of my choosing in hopes of eventual publication on the Law Library's blog, In Custodia Legis. The goal was to create engaging content for diverse audiences that would highlight the Library's collections as well as make complex legal topics more accessible to the public. I researched the practice of displaying colonized people at the 1904 World's Fair and during my study I discovered one person with a story so compelling I couldn't get it out of my mind. Unfortunately, this topic was considered too provocative for publication. Being provocative was never my intent, Ota Benga's story is unavoidably infuriating and needs no embellishment from me. My goal was to write a sensitive and respectful snapshot of his difficult story without contributing to the legacy of his exploitation. I believe I did so. I remain grateful for the opportunity to intern at the most incredible library in the world and while I am disappointed my work won't be published, I have no regrets and am proud of what I've written. Thank you for taking the time to read Ota Benga's story.

TW: human trafficking, racism, colonialism

For about three weeks in September of 1906, New York City was abuzz with interest in the Bronx Zoological Park’s newest resident. Recently arrived from Congo, their acquisition was briefly exhibited at the American Museum of Natural History before arriving at the zoo’s primate house. This new resident was a man named Ota Benga and his story played out in American newspapers in the early 20th century, many of which are available in the Library’s Chronicling America collection.

https://lccn.loc.gov/2014702691 Photograph shows Ota Benga (ca. 1883-1916), a pygmy from the Congo who was brought to the U.S. for the 1904 World's Fair. Unable to return to Africa in 1916, he became depressed and committed suicide in 1916.

Ota Benga was brought to the United States by Rev. Samuel Phillips Verner in 1904. Verner traveled extensively as a missionary in Africa but by the turn of the century, he was engaged in the acquisition of both animals and humans for display in the United States. The purpose of his 1903-4 expedition was to procure several indigenous people of Central Africa, specifically those of short stature known as “pygmies” for their display at the 1904 World’s Fair in St. Louis. A digitized Rand-McNally guide to the fair is available here. These “human zoos” were billed as anthropological exhibits and offered western audiences the opportunity to view the so-called “primitive races” of colonized people in outdoor life-sized dioramas.

There are some differences in newspaper accounts of how Ota Benga came to be in the hands of Verner but in general the story goes as follows. While traveling in Congo Verner encountered a group of people holding Ota Benga captive. The identity of his captors varies depending on the source. Ota Benga was described as being approximately 22 years old, just under five feet tall, and was a member of the Mbuti people, one of several Central African ethnic groups referred to as “pygmies”. Verner describes purchasing his freedom and granting Ota Benga’s request to return to the United States together with seven other Mbuti men destined for the World’s Fair. After the World’s Fair concluded, Ota Benga traveled back to Congo with Verner but returned to the United States in 1906 after acquiring two chimpanzees for the Bronx Zoo.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/70323761@N00/469410707 The Bronx Zoo Primate House. Taken by Wally Gobetz , April 21, 2007

Ota Benga was initially housed at the American Museum of Natural History, but it was decided by Verner and William Temple Hornaday, director of the Bronx Zoo that the primate house would be more suitable. Hornaday was a taxidermist, zoologist, and prominent early conservationist. A finding aid for his papers at Library of Congress Manuscript Division is available here.

Newspapers breathlessly reported on Ota Benga’s appearance in the primate house, a spectacle which drew thousands of gawking visitors during a time when the zoo typically anticipates a seasonal decline in visitors. A sign was placed at the cages stating Ota Benga would appear daily in the primate house throughout September.

As word spread, the crowds at the Bronx Zoo became larger, 300-500 people at a time and increasingly frenzied. One report describes a crowd which “pressed threateningly” while a panicked and retreating Ota Benga loosed an arrow into the mob before being locked inside the primate house by a keeper. Another account details Ota Benga allegedly using a knife to attack a zookeeper after being “teased” by the public and sprayed with a hose by zoo staff seeking to “add to the sport”. The article describes Ota Benga removing his clothes in an act of defiance and being “overpowered” and “driven into his cage”. Many of these reports end similarly, with Ota Benga being locked inside the primate house.

The Zoo’s exhibition of Ota Benga was not without critics. The most vocal were a group of Black ministers, led by Rev. James Gordon. The clergymen met with Zoo officials, protested, spoke to the newspapers, and appealed to the mayor of New York City but were rebuffed. As opposition to Ota Benga’s captivity rose, the facilitators of the exhibit and their apologists scrambled to reframe the situation as a simple misunderstanding blown out of proportion. Verner himself wrote a letter to the editor asking the “intelligent and serious” readers to dismiss the stories circulating and writes of his astonishment at the excitement saying “We were simply two friends, travelling together, until, for some inexplicable reason, New York’s scientists and preachers began wrangling over him, and the peaceful tenor of our way was so ruthlessly disturbed.” Verner’s dismissal of the growing outage was supported by a distinct shift in the media coverage. Newspapers now identified Ota Benga as an employee of the zoo, the best and most suitable person to assist with the care of the primates. Some reports ridiculed the possibility anyone could believe he was a captive.

The 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution abolished slavery and involuntary servitude 41 years prior to Ota Benga’s exhibition in the Bronx Zoo primate house and yet it seems to have offered him little protection. It cannot be proven Verner kidnapped Ota Benga from Congo but there is also no evidence he received wages from the Zoo. Not until 2000 would legislation be passed that might have prevented his exploitation. The Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act of 2000 defines severe human trafficking in part as “the recruitment, harboring, transportation, provision, or obtaining of a person for labor or services, through the use of force, fraud, or coercion for the purpose of subjection to involuntary servitude, peonage, debt bondage, or slavery” (22 U.S.C. § 7102(9)).

So how did this happen? Newspapers initially claimed the display was declared educational by scientists espousing Darwinism. But the invitation to compare Ota Benga with the animals with which he was housed conflicts with the assertion he was a willing employee receiving wages. Confining a man in a zoo was a novel approach to an already established practice although the shifting official narrative obscures the Zoo’s true motivations. The exhibition of colonized people of color was often used to perpetuate theories of scientific racism, a misnomer for 19th and early 20th century attempts to use science to support white supremacy. It is significant to note that Bronx Zoo founder and associate of Hornaday, Madison Grant, was the author of The Passing of the Great Race, a discredited pseudoscientific book advancing white supremacist theories. This book was cited by Nazis at the Nuremberg Trails as justification for their crimes against humanity. Ota Benga’s captivity under the direction of a man who would become a prominent eugenicist brings all claims of misunderstandings and paid wages into question.

Eventually, Rev. Gordon’s efforts were rewarded, and Ota Benga was released into his care. He spent time at the Howard Colored Orphan Asylum in Brooklyn and eventually settled in Lynchburg, Virginia. There, Ota Benga attended the Virginia Theological Seminary and College, formed friendships, worked, and was known to enjoy teaching local boys how to hunt and fish. But after several years he decided to return home to Congo only to have his plans disrupted by the Great War. Disheartened, Ota Benga committed suicide on March 20, 1916. Few newspapers covered his death and those that did perpetuated racist mischaracterizations him as a cannibal and unintelligent. Ota Benga left no personal papers to tell his own story. What remains are varying and subjective newspaper stories, accounts by his captors, and the very few who knew him in Virginia. Considering the lack of human dignity afforded him it should be no surprise he chose against trusting anyone with his story.

https://search.creativecommons.org/photos/fb72a093-1c85-4789-9927-1fe95a3c1533 Photo by Kipp Teague, taken on October 11, 2017.

In 2017 Lynchburg community members erected a historical marker commemorating his life. On July 29, 2020 the Wildlife Conservation Society which has operated the Bronx Zoo since its founding, issued a statement apologizing for the treatment of Ota Benga and recognizing the efforts of Rev. Gordon and other Black ministers in ending his captivity. The WCS also acknowledged and denounced their founder Madison Grant’s racist theories.

You can learn more about Ota Benga’s experience in the United States in Spectacle: The Astonishing Life of Ota Benga by Pamela Newkirk.