African Boy Caged in Bronx Zoo

The story of Ota Benga, an African Mbuti pygmy, being exhibited in the Bronx Zoo in 1904 is one of the most shocking examples of racial exploitation and human cruelty in modern history. Ota Benga, born in the Congo, was brought to the United States after being captured by slave traders and eventually sold to an American anthropologist named Samuel Phillips Verner, who was tasked with acquiring "exotic" people for exhibition at the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair. After the fair, Ota Benga was taken to the Bronx Zoo in New York City, where he was shockingly displayed as part of the zoo’s "human exhibit" in the Monkey House.

At the zoo, Ota Benga was placed in a cage alongside chimpanzees, orangutans, and other primates. He was forced to interact with these animals while spectators viewed him like an exotic curiosity, reinforcing racist ideas of the time that portrayed non-Western people as "primitive" or subhuman. Signs at the zoo even listed Ota Benga as part of the zoological display, equating him with the animals. Crowds would mock him, laugh, and hurl insults, treating him as less than human.

This disturbing exhibition sparked outrage among Black ministers and activists, who protested his treatment. Under increasing pressure, the zoo eventually removed Ota Benga from the exhibit, but the damage had been done. He was placed in an orphanage and later moved to Virginia, but he never recovered from the trauma of his experience. Isolated and without hope for returning to his homeland, Ota Benga tragically took his own life in 1916. His story serves as a stark reminder of the inhumanity of racism and the devastating impact of dehumanizing individuals for the sake of entertainment.