Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, February 7, 1993 TAG: 9302040199
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By Mike Hudson/Staff writer
DATELINE: LYNCHBURG LENGTH: Long
THIS MAN JOURNEYED FROM THE FORESTS OF AFRICA TO THE WOODLANDS AND HILLS OF
His story, now a nationally acclaimed book, is one of racism and respect in America
The children called him Otto Bingo. His real name was Toa Benga. He was a Pygmy from the African Congo. He came to America just after the turn of the century to explore the ways of "muzungus" - people with white skin - only to find himself put on display in the ape house at the Bronx Zoo.
Black clergymen in New York eventually spirited him away to Virginia Seminary, a black school in Lynchburg.
In Africa, Ota Benga had hunted elephants. In Virginia, he taught himself - and a devoted group of black youngsters - how to hunt the small woodland creatures that lived in the rolling hills around Lynchburg.
Ota Benga made many friends in Lynchburg. But he still was an outsider among both blacks and whites - living in a Southern town in an era when blacks were treated as less-than-worthy human beings.
"He was a very jovial fellow," remembers Chauncey Spencer, who was one of the children who knew Ota Benga as a friend. "But he had his sad moments. I think now those were the moments when he was thinking about Africa."
On March 16, 1916, Ota Benga pointed a revolver at his heart and shot himself to death.
Until recently, few people remembered Ota Benga. But that is changing thanks to the publication last fall of "Ota Benga: The Pygmy in the Zoo" by St. Martin's Press.
The book, by Harvey Blume and Phillips Verner Bradford, is slated to become a TriStar film co-produced by actor Denzel Washington. The New York Times has named it one of the notable books of 1992.
Chauncey Spencer, 86, lives on the street where he grew up in Lynchburg. He was one of a handful of people who lent their memories to the telling of Ota Benga's story. Spencer believes it is an important piece of history - all the more so in light of today's continued atmosphere of racial misunderstanding.
Pseudo-science and P.T. Barnum
The story of how the young African man came to America actually begins with Samuel Phillips Verner, an evangelist and explorer who had a history of mental instability.
Verner was the grandson of a Southern planter and slave owner. His father was a leader in the White Supremacist Party after the Civil War.
Verner's views on race were perhaps gentler than his forebears', but they still conformed to the prejudices of the era.
He first went to Africa as a missionary, intent on saving souls, satisfying his scientific curiosity and laying the groundwork for winning his fortune. He went back a second time under contract with organizers of the 1904 World's Fair in St. Louis to bring back Africans for display.
On this trip, Verner saved Ota Benga from some Baschilele villagers. The Pygmy had been enslaved - and his family slaughtered - during one of the bloody episodes that characterized Belgium's colonial rule of the Congo region.
Ota Benga, who was in early 20s, thanked Verner for purchasing his freedom by agreeing to come to America. He also persuaded several other Pygmies to join them.
In St. Louis, they were put on display, along with Eskimos, Filipinos and American Indians. These exhibits combined pseudo-science and P.T. Barnum showmanship. Behind the shows was the organizers' desire to show that whites were superior.
Ota Benga and the other Africans were given free run of the fair, but couldn't go anywhere without being mobbed and pawed. Sometimes they became so annoyed at being harassed - they particularly hated being photographed - they would grab their spears and pretend to rush the tourists.
Throughout it all, they were forced to wear their native loincloths, even in the cold and wind of winter.
The man in the zoo cage
Ota Benga finally returned to Africa, serving as companion and confidant during Verner's quest for artifacts to bring back for sale in America.
Despite his bad experiences in St. Louis, Ota Benga was still curious about America. He demanded that Verner bring him back to the United States with him.
In 1906, the two sailed past the Statue of Liberty into New York Harbor.
Ota Benga's hopes for exploring America at the side of friend never came true, however. Verner was dogged by creditors, and he arranged to have his companion live at the Bronx Zoo while he got his affairs in order.
Ota Benga moved into a guest cottage at the zoo and, at first, quietly roamed the grounds dressed in Western clothes.
But after he befriended an orangutan, the zoo's director came up with the idea of putting the two together on display in the ape cage. A sign was posted: "The African Pigmy, `Ota Benga.' Age 23 years. Height, 4 feet 11 inches. Weight, 103 pounds. . . . Exhibited each afternoon during September."
Just as in St. Louis, crowds flocked to see the Pygmy. The zoo's administration was happy to have a drawing card to chase away the usual late-summer drop in attendance. One Sunday, 40,000 people descended on the zoo. Finally, complaints by black ministers brought the spectacle to a stop.
Otto Bingo
Ota Benga lived in orphanages in New York for a few years, and then, in 1910, traveled to Lynchburg to live at the Baptist seminary that was part of the town's well-established black community.
Ota Benga - who by now had Americanized his name to "Otto Bingo" - slept for a while in a carriage house, and, later, in a room attached to the school's bell tower. He learned to read and occasionally attended classes at the seminary. "His ability to learn - so I am told - was very high," Chauncey Spencer says.
Chauncey Spencer was just 4 years old when Ota Benga arrived in Lynchburg. His mother, Anne Spencer, a poet who later became a force in Harlem's literary renaissance, befriended Ota Benga and frequently welcomed him into her home on Pierce Street.
Chauncey Spencer and other neighborhood children spent hours in the woods hunting, fishing and gathering wild honey with Ota Benga. He made wooden arrows and bows, stringing his bows with horsehide and soaking the wood in water overnight to ensure it would bend properly.
"He taught us, if you wait for a squirrel, he'll always come around to your side of the tree" - corkscrewing 'round and 'round the trunk on the way up.
"I can't recall that I ever saw him hit a squirrel," Spencer says. But from time to time he would return from his trips with squirrel, rabbit and other wild game.
Once, Ota Benga tracked and captured a bear cub. He let it go after a while, but it would return to visit Benga on campus now and then.
`He wanted to go home'
His trips into town were less idyllic. When Ota Benga walked through Cottontown, a white working-class section of Lynchburg, some boys cursed him and threw rocks. "Why they do that?" he asked.
Late one March afternoon in 1916, Ota Benga built a fire. Chauncey Spencer and the other boys begged them to take them hunting. He chased them away.
The book describes the scene: "It was frightening, their friend and teacher, grown suddenly so heavy and immobile, so unresponsive. When he spoke, and it was seldom, they could see tears in his eyes, and he told them he wanted to go home."
A crowd gathered to see him dancing and singing tribal songs around the fire. The boys tried to join him, but he chased them away.
Finally, the people left, and Ota Benga was alone. The next morning, he was found dead, a revolver in his hand.
Looking back now, Spencer says, "I guess he decided these are Christians and, with Christianity, you have a soul. And he thought he'd shoot himself and his soul would go back to Africa."
Afterward, the 9-year-old couldn't accept what had happened. Sometimes he would go looking for Ota Benga. "I'd go into the carriage house. I'd go into the bell tower. And he wasn't there."
Ota Benga was buried in a tiny Methodist cemetery in the White Rock Hill section of Lynchburg. Spencer remembers a small headstone, with a simple inscription: "Otto Bingo."
Today, the cemetery is overgrown. Ota Benga's grave is unmarked, lost under brambles and shifting earth.
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