Ota Benga

Ota Benga was a Congolese man caged in the Bronx Zoo’s monkey cage in 1906. Ota Benga was “exhibited” in New York’s Bronx zoo monkey cage in 1906 to “address” human evolution. The New York Times editorial said of the display at the time: We do not quite understand all the emotion which others are expressing in the matter… It is absurd to make moan over the imagined humiliation and degradation Benga is suffering.

Benga was thereafter allowed to roam the grounds of the zoo as a sort of interactive exhibit. In response to his general situation and to verbal and physical prods from the crowds, his behavior became at first mischievous and then somewhat violent. The pygmies…are very low in the human scale, and the suggestion that Benga should be in a school instead of a cage ignores the high probability that school would be a place…from which he could draw no advantage whatever

The person responsible for this exhibition degrades himself as much as he does the African,” said Rev. Dr. R. MacArthur of Calvary Baptist Church. “Instead of making a beast of this little fellow, he should be put in school for the development of such powers as God gave to him. It is too bad that there is not some society like the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. We send our missionaries to Africa to Christianize the people, and then we bring one here to brutalize him.