In September 1906, the Bronx Zoo put a young African man on display in its Monkey House. His name was Ota Benga. He was a member of the Mbuti people from what is now the Democratic Republic of Congo. And thousands of New Yorkers came to see him. But how did he end up there? In 1904, an American businessman named Samuel Phillips Verner brought Benga to the United States, where he was exhibited at the St. Louis World’s Fair. Two years later, Benga arrived at the Bronx Zoo. The institution was operated by the New York Zoological Society, and its director was William Hornaday. During September 1906, zoo officials displayed Benga in the Monkey House, including alongside an orangutan. Visitors gathered to stare. Newspapers reported on the spectacle. And the zoo treated a human being as an exhibit. But Black New Yorkers refused to accept it. African American ministers organized protests, condemning the treatment of Benga and demanding his removal. Among them was Reverend James H. Gordon. Their objections helped bring the exhibition to an end. Gordon subsequently arranged for Benga to stay at the orphanage he directed in Weeksville, Brooklyn. But the damage didn’t end when Benga left the zoo. He later moved to Virginia, where he attempted to build a new life. Unable to return to Africa during World War I, Benga died by suicide in 1916. He was approximately 32 years old. And there’s another disturbing connection. One of the New York Zoological Society’s founders was Madison Grant. Grant later published The Passing of the Great Race in 1916, promoting racist eugenics and theories of white racial superiority. His writings became influential within the international eugenics movement, including among Nazi racial ideologues. Then, more than a century after Benga’s exhibition, the institution finally publicly confronted what happened. In June 2020, the Wildlife Conservation Society, which operates the Bronx Zoo, formally apologized for its treatment of Ota Benga. It also condemned the racist ideology promoted by figures associated with its early leadership. The organization released historical records documenting the exhibition. 1906: A man was displayed in a zoo. 2020: The institution formally apologized. Ota Benga was never an animal. He was a human being whose dignity was denied by an institution that claimed to represent science. And his name deserves to be remembered. #OtaBenga #BronxZoo #BlackHistory #tiktokmademelearnit #learnhistoryontiktok - @finvory