When a Congolese man named Ota Benga died in Lynchburg 100 years ago this past weekend, the official (and obvious) verdict was that he had taken his own life. In reality, however, his life had ...

History may indeed be written by the victors, but sometimes, often generations later, it is mercifully corrected. Pamela Newkirk has done just that in an important new book that retells the little ...

Benga later moved to Lynchburg, Va., and worked in a tobacco factory before dying by suicide in 1916. “Robbed of his humanity and unable to return home, Ota Benga tragically took his life a ...

Ota Benga (ca. 1883-1916), a pygmy from the Congo who was brought to the U.S. for the 1904 World’s Fair. Unable to return to Africa in 1916, he became depressed and committed suicide in 1916.

Two years later, a Congo Pygmy named Ota Benga was housed temporarily at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City—and then exhibited, briefly and controversially, at the Bronx Zoo.

There is perhaps no sadder example of colonialism’s human toll than the life of Ota Benga. Grand narratives of nation and identity are often inscribed in little-told stories of individual ...

In September 1906, Ota Benga, a boyish-looking African man, was exhibited in a cage in the Bronx Zoo’s Monkey House, at times with an orangutan. The so-called “pygmy” from the Congo became a ...

In the end, however, it wasn’t enough. On the late afternoon of March 19, 1916, Ota Benga built a fire in the field between his adopted home and the Seminary buildings.

Spectacle: The Astonishing Life of Ota Benga Pamela Newkirk. Harper/Amistad, $25.99 (304p) ISBN 978-0-06-220100-3 ...