Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, January 13, 1993 TAG: 9301130369
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A11 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: STAN VINSON
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
THE TRIALS OF OTA BENGA ONE OF AMERICA'S FORGOTTEN INJUSTICES
AS MOST of America was devastated by the Rodney King beating and the trial verdict, I now would like to share with you another man's degradation in turn-of-the-century America. The story is not available on tape, and is not printed at length in any of our history books today.According to journalist Stephanie Gadlin, Ota Benga, a Pygmy (Pygmies are members of several African and Asian peoples with a hereditary height from 4 to 5 feet), has a disturbing and gripping tale that outlines one of America's forgotten injustices.
In the early 1900s, Samuel P. Verner, a Caucasian missionary turned explorer, traveled into the Congo's interior to pillage artifacts and natives for U.S. profits.
In early 1904, Verner traveled into the Belgian Congo and be-friended a young man named Ota Benga. Through translation, Benga was asked if he wanted to see the world by journeying to the United States aboard a cargo ship. He had previously been Verner's guide through thick brush and forests to discover ancient burial sites of black Africans in the region.
Accepting the invitation and perhaps not understanding the nature of his inviter, Benga wound up two years later locked in the primate house of the Bronx Zoo. There the 4-foot, 8-inch man sat in horror and shame with orangutans and chimpanzees.
Thousands of New Yorkers flocked to the zoo to stare at Benga, whom the press labeled a "cannibal" because of his cosmetically altered teeth.
As news of Benga's display spread throughout the country, the zoo-keepers devised a marketing plan that would even further their profits. They scattered human bones in the cage and notified the viewing public.
It wasn't until a group of local black ministers decried the degradation that Benga was removed from the cage. Yet he was not freed. Instead, he was put on display at the 1904 St. Louis Exposition. There, the African was paraded with Geronimo, the historic Apache Indian who defied the Caucasian-Mexican massacre of his people.
They were prodded, examined, mocked and spat upon as whites paraded before facsimiles of their "natural habitats" at the fair. Though the fair continued during winter months, Benga, as well as other Pygmies who had since been coerced to the United States, were not allowed to put on winter clothing, for fear of not appearing "natural-looking."
In late 1906, Benga was removed from his captors by well-to-do blacks and placed in the New York-based Howard Colored Orphan Asylum (though he was well into his 20s), and taught to read and write. He wound up living in Lynchburg, where he met Anne Spencer, a Harlem Renaissance poet.
Though he enjoyed the calm of Lynchburg, its forests and the nice American blacks who talked to him, Benga committed suicide in March 1916 because of grief, homesickness and the reality of the horror of living in uncivilization. He had often told his "true friends" that he longed to see his home again.
Samuel P. Verner, the man who brought Benga to the United States, was recorded in American history as a great industrial pioneer, conqueror and explorer.
Ota Benga, on the other hand, drifted from the minds of millions just as quickly as his image of the hungry black cannibal had entered them. Ironically, his name is not recorded in history books as a brave black liberation fighter, nor is his story recorded in the annals of black history.
And although his story is not on film, the Spike Lees and the Denzel Washingtons of this country will soon make it known to all people in all nations of the world: True African-American history shall overcome some day!