Ota Benga: The Congolese Man Who Exposed the “Cage of Racism”

3rd March 2025

4 minutes read

Ota Benga: The Congolese Man Who Exposed the "Cage of Racism"

Ota Benga’s life was nothing but a mirror reflecting the hidden brutality behind the slogans of “civilization” and “progress” in the early 20th century.

He lost his family, homeland, and freedom—not to a conventional war, but to a colonial machine that saw his body and race as commodities to be bought and sold, and as a fabricated testament to white superiority.

His story is not merely a tragic tale; it is a resounding indictment of a systemic racism that reduced a human being to nothing more than a “display creature,” according to The Collector website.

When New Yorkers visited the Bronx Zoo on Saturday, September 8, 1906, they were treated to the exhibition of a new creature in the monkey house. At first, they were unsure what kind of being it was, but a sign at the entrance indicated that the zoo was hosting an ancient creature representing the “missing link” in human evolution.

This strange “beast” was short, dark-skinned, and had sharp teeth that did not resemble those of humans. Yet, he performed entertaining acts inside the primate cage.

Ota Benga’s disturbing and ultimately tragic story highlights the precarious status and devaluation of Black lives in America in the early 19th century—just four decades after the abolition of slavery.

From the Forests of Congo to the Cages of America: A Journey of Abduction

Ota Benga inside a zoo cage

Ota Benga was born in the heart of the Congolese rainforest, where he lived as a skilled hunter among the Mbuti people. But his world was turned upside down in 1904 when a rival tribe attacked his village. He lost his wife and two children and was captured by local slave traders. He was then sold for a meager sum to Samuel Verner, an American missionary who had turned his failure to establish a church in Congo into a sadistic business venture: bringing “human beasts” to American exhibitions.

أوتا بينغا داخل قفص حديقة الحيوان

At the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair, Benga was displayed alongside four other Congolese men in a fabricated “African village.” He was forced to wear leaves and dance for visitors while organizers labeled him a “savage cannibal.”

These exhibitions were not just for entertainment; they were fueled by racist pseudoscience that falsely claimed his small skull and pointed teeth “proved” the biological inferiority of Black people. Later, he was transferred to New York, where he was confined in a cage with an orangutan, becoming a supposed symbol of the “missing link” in a distorted interpretation of Darwinian evolution.

Bronx Zoo: Where a Man Became a Spectacle

Under the supervision of zoologist William Hornaday, Ota Benga became a major attraction at the Bronx Zoo. Visitors threw stones at him and photographed him as a “beast,” while he sat inside his cage, clutching the only remnant of his freedom—his bow. When he tried to protest by throwing chairs at his guards, his isolation only worsened.

In 1906, African American clergymen intervened to rescue him, realizing that what was happening was not just humiliation but a grave human rights violation.

Exile Even in Freedom: The “Civilized” Man Who Longed for the Jungle

After his release, Ota Benga was sent to an orphanage in Brooklyn, despite being an adult. In 1910, he was transferred to Lynchburg, Virginia, where he enrolled in a theological institute.

At night, he wept to his classmates about his lost forest, dreaming of returning to a land where birds sang and no cages existed.

Ota Benga inside a zoo cage

He was forced to wear European clothing, and his teeth were reshaped to hide his “uncivilized” appearance.

Despite excelling academically, he found no joy in his studies. Instead, he found solace in teaching local boys how to hunt and set traps.

Suicide: The Final Bullet That Shook the World’s Conscience

On March 20, 1916, after years of humiliation, Ota Benga gathered pieces of wood, lit a fire like those he once made in his forest, and pointed a gun at his heart.

Perhaps he saw death as an escape from a world that refused to recognize his humanity. His body was buried in an unmarked grave, but his story remains a reminder that racism is not just an ideology—it is a machine that kills slowly.

The Legacy of Ota Benga: A Wound That Has Not Healed

Today, the Bronx Zoo tries to erase the memory of this disgrace, while American universities teach Benga’s story as a warning about the dangers of “scientific racism.”

But more important than acknowledging history is confronting the persistence of the same ideas. In 2020, New York’s Museum of Natural History pledged to remove a statue of Theodore Roosevelt—one of Benga’s patrons—from its facade, a reminder that racism does not always hide behind cages; sometimes, it masquerades in statues and so-called “heroic” titles.