Ota Benga [Paperback]

Phillips Verner Bradford (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1, 1993

Less than a century ago, a human being was put on display in New York's Bronx Zoo. This is the astonishing and appalling story of Ota Benga's odyssey in savage turn-of-the-century America. A fascinating glimpse at the financial greed, religious arrogance, and racism of America's past. Photo insert.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

In 1904, white missionary Samuel Phillips Verner (grandfather of the author) brought eight Congolese pygmies, including Ota Benga, out of Kasailand in Africa in order to exhibit them for the anthropology department at the St. Louis World's Fair. Then in 1906, Ota was placed on display with an orangutan in a primate house cage at the Bronx Zoo. Although this pairing was a very successful publicity stunt, black fundamentalist clergymen objected to both the ludicrous treatment of this pygmy and his evolutionary association with a great ape. Ten years later, Ota committed suicide in Lynchburg, Virginia. This fascinating book is a tragic glimpse at financial greed, human exploitation, religious arrogance, scientific abuse (e.g., social Darwinism), and, especially, unfounded racism. It includes an appendix of relevant letters and newspaper articles. Recommended for historical, social science, and general collections. For a more anthropological study of the pygmies, see also Colin Turnbull's The Forest People ( LJ 12/1/61).
- H. James Birx, Canisius Coll., Buffalo, N.Y.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Kirkus Reviews

An affecting story of an ugly instance of Western hubris, as told to writer Blume by the grandson of the man responsible for bringing Ota Benga, a pygmy eventually placed in a zoo, to America. Like so many others at the end of the 19th century, Samuel Phillips Verner was caught up in the enthusiasm for science, especially Darwinism and anthropology, which seemed to promise that a tidy scientific ranking could be imposed not only on plants and animals but on races as well. To this end, Verner, originally a Presbyterian missionary in the Congo, was commissioned to supply the 1904 World's Fair in St. Louis with a band of pygmies for the anthropology exhibit. These pygmies--including Benga--were to join the famed Native American leader Geronimo, a Patagonian Indian, and other ``permanent wildmen of the world, the races that had been left behind.'' But Verner himself was a man of considerable complexity. Determined, like his hero Robinson Crusoe, to escape the safe ``middle station'' in life, he was also as a southerner haunted by racial guilt. He developed a close and warm friendship with Benga, who asked to stay on after the Fair was over. Delivered by Verner to the Natural History Museum in New York, where he soon became ``restless,'' Benga was then transferred to the Bronx Zoo. There, his presence in the same cage as an ape, along with a description identifying him as ``The African Pygmy Exhibited Each Afternoon,'' outraged the media and the public. Verner, congenitally broke, agreed to have local black clergy house Benga in a black orphanage. Later, the pygmy was moved to Lynchburg, Virginia, where, though he became a respected member of local black society, memories of his African past haunted him. He finally committed suicide in 1916. A somber cautionary tale, well told, of human ambition, arrogance, and ignorance unchecked. (Forty illustrations--not seen.) -- Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Paperback
• Publisher: Delta (September 1, 1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0385311052
• ISBN-13: 978-0385311052
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #331,268 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #3 in Books > History > Africa > Republic of the Congo
  • #23 in Books > History > Africa > Democratic Republic of Congo

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars sadly true, November 21, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Ota Benga: The Pygmy in the Zoo (Hardcover)

I picked up this book not expecting it to be true. The author does a good job of illuminating the lives of many people in and around the main character Ota Benga. This book also expertly portrays the cultural and political environment that raped Africans in the Belgian Congo, and oppressed them in Anglo-America. I highly reccomend this for your own library if you are an honest student of history.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Worth Reading if the Subject Interests You, June 10, 2006

By 

M. Broderick "mikebinok" (Oklahoma City, OK USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Ota Benga: The Pygmy in the Zoo (Hardcover)

I'd read references to a pygmy being placed on display in a zoo around the turn of the Century, but had never seen more till I was inspired to investigate by a song about the pygmy in an album by Pinataland. This book was the only adult book I was able to locate on the subject. I was suspicious because the grandson of Verner, arguably the "Villain" in the story was involved in the book.

The book appears to me to be reasonably unbiased, and certainly is no whitewash of Verner. It tells about Verner's three trips to Africa, how Ota Benga went to the USA with Verner, returned to Africa, and asked to go back to the USA, supposedly temporarily, but what ended up to be a permanent and tragic return. It ends up that Benga was actually on public display twice, and that there was another group of Africans with him placed on display who had a less unhappy end. There are a number of divergences from the story of Ota Benga and of Verner, especially in the first third of the book. These made me impatient early on, but the divergences are justified. There are a lot of people involved in this story from all over Europe and North America, including Bernard Baruch, Geronimo, King Leopold II of Belgium, Roger Casement the Irish revolutionary<!>, Mark Twain, and P.T. Barnum.

I recommend finding the book if you are remotely interested in the topic. My personal suspicion is that after the raid by hostile Africans that destroyed Ota Benga's family originally, Benga was pretty much destined for an unhappy end. This doesn't excuse the selfish and/or indifferent behavior of Verner. Verner shifted from a caring, but not too responsible guardian of Benga early on to to later seeming to actively seek to forget and ignore the human who had placed his future in Verner's hands.

The only real negative about the book I can find is that the author is sometimes tempted to journey into psychohistory of his characters with little justification. As long as you accept these ventures as sheer speculation and nothing more, you'll be fine.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A look at ourselves ....., October 23, 2006

By 

Abelard Spring - See all my reviews

This review is from: Ota Benga: The Pygmy in the Zoo (Hardcover)

I heard about this book while listening recently to National Public Radio. I'm glad I took the time to get it and to read it. It's the fascinating story not only about a pygmy named Ota Binga, but about ourselves, the people of "the Modern age." Though we're a bit distanced from the early 20th century, we still bear the marks of Modernity with its trust in empiricism and its belief that science has all the answers. Thinking themselves the epitome of humanity's development, and inspired by theories of social Darwinism, inquiring minds went to Africa in search of pygmies they could put on display at the 1904 Worlds Fair in St. Louis, along with the aged Chief Geronimo, Ingorots from the Phillipines, and others.

When S. P. Verner returned most of the pygmies to their native land, Ota asked to return to the United States, once again becoming a pawn in Verner's plan to win accolades and gain financial reward because of his travels in Africa. Though few took Verner very seriously (in great part because of his lifelong struggle with mental illness), the Bronx Zoological Gardens did take an interest in Ota. It was there that he became a virtual prisoner of that institution and became known as "the pgymy in the zoo." When representatives of the Colored Baptist Ministers' Conference received word of Ota's address being at the zoo's Monkey House, they pressured authorities to be allowed to take him to an orphanage (although Ota was already an adult). Finding Ota to be more and more unmanageable, the zoo's leadership agreed.

Rather than ruin the story for you, let me encourage you to read it for yourself. It takes a few more turns as Ota moves south and it eventually comes to a sad end. Abandoned by Verner, and unable to purchase a ticket to Africa, Ota Binga finds another way to return to his beloved land: "If the darkness IS and the darkness is of the forest, then the darkness must be good."

This book is both entertaining and disturbing. Above all, it is thought-provoking. One of the authors is grandson to S. P. Verner, so it was probably a difficult volume to produce. Looking closely at our ancestors can be unnerving ... it can remind us of ourselves.