Humanity's inhumanity seems endless. Knowledge is power. Historical research yields unfathomable acts of racist hatred, humiliation, and torture. One renown example is the captive existence of an African woman named Sara "Saartjie" Baartman. A lesser known case is that of an African man named Ota Benga.

Like Saartjie, Ota was caged and treated like a circus animal. Unlike Saartjie, Ota's remains were never returned to his homeland. Ota's bondage was sanctioned by America's most revered scientists and anthropologists. They conspired with the curators of New York's Bronx Zoo, resulting in Ota's legal and commercial captivity. Ota was the featured caged attraction at the 1904 World's Fair.

Evolutionary theory, like all American scholarship, is historically rooted in white supremacy and rabid racism. During this era, Africans were openly described as "agricultural barbarians" and "ape-like" in academic journals. Ota was abused in the name of anthropological science.

Ota's racist nightmares began in the Belgian Congo. Ota was born in 1881. He was a bushman from the Bachichiri tribe of the Kasai River in Zaire. Colonist Belgian thugs murdered his wife and children. Ota was captured and sold into slavery.

African "explorer" Samuel Verner purchased Ota and several other pygmies. He filed their teeth down to sharp points to make them all appear more savage to patrons who frequented the fair. Ota was 23 when he became a slave and Verner made him a zoo animal. When the fair ended, Verner returned Ota and his peers to the Belgian Congo. Ota remarried. After his second wife died of a snake bite, Ota was lost. All of his family members were dead or lost inside the slave trade. Somehow, amazingly and suspiciously, Verner convinced Ota to return to America again.

In 1906, Verner hawked Ota to the directors of the Bronx Zoological Gardens. They purchased Ota and he became the permanent property of the zoo. Clearly, Verner and these zoo officials saw absolutely no difference between Ota and the other beasts that they owned.

Ota was forced to live in a barely separated cage among caged apes. One of the apes was named Dinah. Patrons abused Ota. He was often nearly slain by frenzied racist gawkers. To console Ota, curators gifted him with a parrot and an orangutan, who were both added to Ota's own cage. The orangutan was named Dohung and became Ota's partner during forced antics to entertain onlookers.

Ota drew record throngs. On September 16, 1906, more than 400,000 patrons rushed to see Ota. Local black activists protested this blatantly racist offense. They penned letters of protests and hosted protest meetings. Some blacks did not object as they felt that they were generic Americans, and not African-Americans, and no relation to any "savage little African".

Ota hated the humiliation and danger of his display. He especially hated mean children and rough mobs who assaulted him regularly when he dared to venture beyond the bars of his cage. One day Ota snapped and obtained a carving knife from the feeding room of the Monkey House. He furiously waved it at patrons for hours. Once, Ota was refused a soda in a fountain near the Bird House and he flew into a rage. It took three male staffers to subdue him and return him to his cage in the Monkey House.

Often, Ota was chased by obnoxious mobs for hours in the zoo. Once, he crafted a bow and arrow to shoot at them in defense. After he wounded a few racist fools, he was seen as a financial liability. Eventually, his warrior ways were regarded as burdensome. Ota was freed and banished from the zoo.

Ota spent the rest of his life wandering in America. Verner had abandoned Ota when he could no longer profit from him. For a while, Ota resided in a black orphanage in Brooklyn. There, a sister named Creola taught him English. His filed fangs were capped to make his teeth appear human again. Ota relocated to Virginia.

Ota briefly attended The Virginia Theological Seminary and College. He quit to work in a tobacco factory. In 1910, Ota was a depressed factory worker in Lynchburg, Virginia. Ota often lamented about being too poor to buy a steamship ticket home to the Congo. Fellow workers often saw hot tears in Ota's eyes.

On March 20, 1916, Ota ended his incredible emotional pain with a revolver. He was 35 years old. Ota removed the caps from his filed teeth before he committed suicide in a cow stable. He shot himself directly in his broken heart...

When racist reporters wrote of Ota's death, they claimed he was just too lazy to really work. They said he chose to die rather than work for a living. Racist "journalists" still pen such lies about fabricated "choices" in American media daily.

Racism is ancient and escalating in America. Africans are still exploited and on display. Now, our captivity is often voluntary, orchestrated by amoral capitalists who look like us. Whether we are gyrating naked on MTV, crippling each other on football fields, or mauling each other in boxing arenas, African-Americans are still feature attractions in Amerikkka's racist media zoos...

Dear brother Ota: May God rest your wounded warrior soul. Your bones lie in captive soil. But, your eternal spirit soars above African soil, hosted by the spirits of legions of African ancestral angels, and your kindred sister Saartjie. We know that you are all home...and we love you across oceans of time...

For more information on the tragic saga Ota Benga, read:

Raw Deal: Horrible Stories of Forgotten Americans  by Ken Smith

Ota Benga: The Pygmy in the Zoo  by Phillip Verner Bradford & Harvey Blue
A typically revisionist and racist book penned by the son of Ota's original captor

St. Louis Post-Dispatch articles from 1904

New York Times articles from 1906 and 1916

Ota Benga: The Story of the Pygmy on Display in a Zoo
http://www.rae.org/otabenga/html
An outstanding and informative website!

The Case of Ota Benga
http://emporium.turnpike.net/C/cs/hsota.htm

Ota Benga: The Pygmy in the Zoo
http://www.concentric.net/~pvb/otasyn.html

For more information about beautiful, magical, and mystical Pygmy tribes, see:

The Gods Must Be Crazy
A classic film

Deep Forest  (1998)
"Sweet Lullaby"
A haunting CD with actual tribal songs and the mystical musical voices of forest pygmies in the mix

The Sirius Mystery: New Scientific Evidence for Alien Contact 5000 Years Ago    by Robert K. G. Temple
A profound book about ancient African space travel and cosmic wisdom

Monuments on Mars    by Richard Hoagland
A stellar scientist exposes ancient African wisdom that racist NASA officials still lie about

For related info, see these additional columns herein:

SAARTJIE'S BELATED HOMECOMING: "SARA BAARTMAN'S" RETURN TO SOUTH AFRICA

THE LIFE & TIMES OF "SARA BAARTMAN" & MADNESS IN MUSIC VIDEOS

ON MOURNING JAMES BYRD

JAMES BYRD'S REGAL DAUGHTERS

ON MOURNING JAMES BYRD

1998 VOTER REBELLION AGAINST RABID NEOCONS

NEOCONS = TOXIC MUTANT CONSERVATIVES

TO MY SEXIST ENEMIES: IN HONOR OF ANGER

RACISM IN ACADEMIA: CALIFORNIA'S READING LIST

LOSING THE RACE?...LOST HIS MIND!!!: ON JOHN MCWHORTER'S RACIST NEOCON LIES

AMERIKKKA'S NEW WORLD WAR

OSCARS 2002: COLORIZED HISTORY, COLORIST REALITY

ON GAYS IN AFRICA

GAY BASHING v. RACISM: SIMILAR v. SYNONYMOUS

PSUEDO-AFROCENTRICS: MY ONGOING INTRATRIBAL WARS

TESTING REALITY: STANDARDIZED SABOTAGE IN ACADEMIA

ON KILLER BEES: RACISM IN MAD SCIENCE

2000=1900: REPUBLIKKKANS STEAL A NATIONAL ELECTION - RACIST TRAPS SNARE MILLIONS OF VOTERS bushWHACKED AT POLLS NATIONWIDE

AMERIKKKA 2000: RACE-ING INTO THE MILLENNIUM

AFFIRMATIVE ACTION: PROPOSITION 209

AFFIRMATIVE ACTION: REALITY CHECK IN RIVERSIDE CALIFORNIA

THE REALITY OF AFFIRMATIVE ACTION

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