Spectacle: The Astonishing Life of Ota Benga

by Pamela Newkirk

Overview

“A riveting account of one of the more startling episodes in the . . . history of race in America” (Wall Street Journal).

Ota Benga, a young African man, was featured as an exhibit at the St. Louis World’s Fair. Two years later, the New York Zoological Gardens displayed him in its Monkey House, caging him with an orangutan. The attraction became an international sensation, drawing thousands of New Yorkers and commanding headlines from across the nation and Europe.

Spectacle explores the circumstances of Ota Benga’s captivity and the international controversy it inspired. Using primary historical documents, Pamela Newkirk traces Ota’s tragic existence, from the Congo to St. Louis to New York and finally to Lynchburg, Virginia, where he lived out the remainder of his short life.

Spectacle simultaneously explores New York City during the early years of the twentieth century, a racially fraught era that led to a rising tide of political disenfranchisement and social scorn for African Americans.

Praise for Spectacle

2016 NAACP Image Award Winner

Named a Best Book of the Year by NPR, the Boston Globe, the San Francisco Chronicle, The Root, and the Huffington Post Black Voices

“Here is a gripping and painstaking narrative that breaks new ground. Now, after a century, Benga has finally been heard.” —New York Times Book Review

“Deeply researched and thoughtful. . . . Writing with precision and moral clarity, Newkirk indicts a civilization whose ‘cruelty was cloaked in civility,’ leaving us to examine its remnants.” —Boston Globe

“This is an explosive, heartbreaking book. It unfolds with the grace of an E. L. Doctorow novel and spins forward with the urgency of a wild tabloid story.” —James McBride, National Book Award–winning author of The Good Lord Bird

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780062201010
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	08/18/2023
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	333
Sales rank:	322,179
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

Pamela Newkirk is an award-winning journalist and a professor of journalism at New York University. She is the author of Within the Veil: Black Journalists, White Media, which won the National Press Club Award for media criticism, and the editor of Letters from Black America. She lives in New York City.

Table of Contents

Author's Note xv

Preface xvii

Part I Caged

1 Gardens of Wonder 3

2 The Bronx Zoo Monkey House 11

3 Crimes of the Congo 18

4 Hornaday's Folly 24

5 Benga's Brigade 31

6 Fighting City Hall 40

7 Benga Speaks 50

8 Backlash 57

9 Nature's Fury 66

10 Deliverance 73

Part II Captured

11 Samuel Phillips Verner 79

12 Luebo Mission 87

13 Kondola, Kassongo. And Verner's African Treasures 97

14 The Hunt 108

15 Verner's Prey 117

16 The St. Louis World's Fair 128

17 Congo Field Notes 140

18 Leopold's Lobby 156

19 Benga's Choice 165

20 A Museum Most Unnatural 170

21 Fondless Farewell 182

Part III Free

22 Weeksville Refuge 189

23 St. James 205

24 Southern Comfort 216

25 Home 229

26 Free 236

27 Homegoing 241

Epilogue 249

Acknowledgments 255

Notes 259

Bibliography 287

Index 299

Editorial Reviews

…Newkirk eschews the self-serving mythologies that have presented Benga's exhibition as voluntary and benign. She relentlessly unearths neglected primary sources such as museum archives and newspaper clippings, and she also includes statements by Benga's overlooked African-American benefactors, as well as those in whom he confided that he had been brought to the United States against his will…this book's stellar achievement eclipses its flaws. Here is a gripping and painstaking narrative that breaks new ground. Now, after a century, Benga has finally been heard.

The New York Times Book Review - Harriet A. Washington

04/06/2015
Newkirk (Within the Veil) centers this meticulously detailed monograph on the life of Ota Benga, a young Congolese man who at the beginning of the 20th century suffered the indignity of being caged with an orangutan at the Bronx Zoo’s Monkey House. Although Benga himself left no written record of his experiences, Newkirk pieces together his story from the texts, photographs, and other records produced by the “lettered elite” whose members were complicit in his capture and display. While other African men and women, including the “Hottentot Venus” Sarah Baartman, had been exhibited to European audiences, Benga’s experience was unusual because it took place not in a “human zoo” but in one devoted to animals, thus depicting this African man not simply as exotic, but as a failure of human evolution. Newkirk places Benga’s story in the context of an ever more segregated and aggressively racist United States, a Europe intent on exploitation of Africa’s human and material resources, and a scientific culture that venerated objective inquiry but refused to question established ideas about race. The book might have benefited from a more effective structure, as it wanders through various times and locations. Nonetheless, readers will be moved, especially when reading about the tragic turns Benga’s life took in the years after he was released. (June)

Publishers Weekly

Here is a gripping and painstaking narrative that breaks new ground. Now, after a century, Benga has finally been heard.” — New York Times Book Review

“Newkirks account of this shocking and shameful story is forceful.” — The New Yorker

“Haunting and heartbreaking.” — Ebony

“What became of Benga is best left discovered by readers of this revelatory book. Suffice to say that the shock of it will haunt you. Newkirk’s dispassionate, powerfully understated writing lets her sorrowful account speak for itself.” — San Francisco Chronicle

“[Ota Benga’s] story has been told before, but the journalist Pamela Newkirk fleshes it out with chilling human dimension and rich anthropological perspective in her engrossing new book, Spectacle. — New York Times, Metro Section "Bookshelf" Review

“With her meticulously researched account, Newkirk rights the record, offering a profoundly unsettling look at the racism deeply rooted in even the city’s (and the nation’s) progressive institutions at the start of the 20th century.” — NYU Stories (Online)

“Newkirk’s investigation is a nuanced account of Benga’s relationship with Verner and Hornaday, a subtle look into what it meant for a colonized African to be free and how the pursuit of scientific knowledge played a role in racial subjection.” — Jezebel

“In this enthralling social history, Newkirk reveals the truth about Ota Benga, the people who exploited him and the heroes who fought vainly to save him.” — More magazine

“This is an explosive, heartbreaking book. It unfolds with the grace of an E.L. Doctorow novel, and spins forward with the urgency of a wild tabloid story.” — James McBride, bestselling author of The Good Lord Bird

“A riveting account of one of the most startling episodes in the sorry history of race in America. Ms. Newkirk is a crisp storyteller as well as an experienced journalist whose investigative skills bring alive both her cast of characters and the age in which they lived.” — Wall Street Journal

“Compelling. . . . Spectacle is an exhaustively researched work of social history that links Benga’s story with examinations of turn-of-the-century racial discrimination and discord, scientific polygenism, middle-class African American life in New York, and yellow journalism.” — Washington Post

“Deeply researched and thoughtful. . . . Writing with precision and moral clarity, Newkirk indicts a civilization whose ‘cruelty was cloaked in civility,’ leaving us to examine its remnants.” — Boston Globe

“Painstakingly researched and heartbreaking. . . . Newkirk does an exemplary job of respecting the damaged dignity of her subject.” — In These Times

“Pamela Newkirk has taken a careful, highly readable look at an episode that lays bare so much about our not-so-distant past. It’s all here: the dreams of glory in African exploration, appalling racism, and the moving, tragic odyssey of a forgotten man who was the victim of both.” — Adam Hochschild, author of King Leopold's Ghost

“A shocking tale of a young African taken from his home for the purposes of Western science throws into relief the turn-of-the-century’s ill-conceived intentions and prejudice. . . . An inspired and moving work of intrepid scholarship.” — Kirkus Reviews

“Meticulously detailed. . . . Readers will be moved, especially when reading about the tragic turns Benga’s life took in the years after he was released.” — Publishers Weekly

From the Publisher

[Ota Benga’s] story has been told before, but the journalist Pamela Newkirk fleshes it out with chilling human dimension and rich anthropological perspective in her engrossing new book, Spectacle.

New York Times

Haunting and heartbreaking.

Ebony

With her meticulously researched account, Newkirk rights the record, offering a profoundly unsettling look at the racism deeply rooted in even the city’s (and the nation’s) progressive institutions at the start of the 20th century.

NYU Stories (Online)

Newkirk’s investigation is a nuanced account of Benga’s relationship with Verner and Hornaday, a subtle look into what it meant for a colonized African to be free and how the pursuit of scientific knowledge played a role in racial subjection.

Jezebel

What became of Benga is best left discovered by readers of this revelatory book. Suffice to say that the shock of it will haunt you. Newkirk’s dispassionate, powerfully understated writing lets her sorrowful account speak for itself.

San Francisco Chronicle

Newkirks account of this shocking and shameful story is forceful.

The New Yorker

This is an explosive, heartbreaking book. It unfolds with the grace of an E.L. Doctorow novel, and spins forward with the urgency of a wild tabloid story.

James McBride

A riveting account of one of the most startling episodes in the sorry history of race in America. Ms. Newkirk is a crisp storyteller as well as an experienced journalist whose investigative skills bring alive both her cast of characters and the age in which they lived.

Wall Street Journal

Here is a gripping and painstaking narrative that breaks new ground. Now, after a century, Benga has finally been heard.

New York Times Book Review

In this enthralling social history, Newkirk reveals the truth about Ota Benga, the people who exploited him and the heroes who fought vainly to save him.

More magazine

Deeply researched and thoughtful. . . . Writing with precision and moral clarity, Newkirk indicts a civilization whose ‘cruelty was cloaked in civility,’ leaving us to examine its remnants.

Boston Globe

Compelling. . . . Spectacle is an exhaustively researched work of social history that links Benga’s story with examinations of turn-of-the-century racial discrimination and discord, scientific polygenism, middle-class African American life in New York, and yellow journalism.

Washington Post

Painstakingly researched and heartbreaking. . . . Newkirk does an exemplary job of respecting the damaged dignity of her subject.

In These Times

Pamela Newkirk has taken a careful, highly readable look at an episode that lays bare so much about our not-so-distant past. It’s all here: the dreams of glory in African exploration, appalling racism, and the moving, tragic odyssey of a forgotten man who was the victim of both.

Adam Hochschild

A riveting account of one of the most startling episodes in the sorry history of race in America. Ms. Newkirk is a crisp storyteller as well as an experienced journalist whose investigative skills bring alive both her cast of characters and the age in which they lived.

Wall Street Journal

What became of Benga is best left discovered by readers of this revelatory book. Suffice to say that the shock of it will haunt you. Newkirk’s dispassionate, powerfully understated writing lets her sorrowful account speak for itself.

San Francisco Chronicle

Compelling. . . . Spectacle is an exhaustively researched work of social history that links Benga’s story with examinations of turn-of-the-century racial discrimination and discord, scientific polygenism, middle-class African American life in New York, and yellow journalism.

Washington Post

Newkirks account of this shocking and shameful story is forceful.

The New Yorker

04/15/2015
In 1906, the New York Zoological Gardens unveiled an exhibit that became an international sensation: its Monkey House, inside which was caged a young Congolese man named Ota Benga. Ota was promoted as a "pygmy" and brought to the United States for the sole purpose of serving as an anthropological display. In New York, Ota was presented as half zookeeper, half exhibit, but it's clear that he was generally regarded as more of the latter than the former—particularly by his promoters, many of whom were renowned eugenicists. When African American leaders protested, everyone from well-respected scientists to the New York Times downplayed the outcry. The Times ran an editorial arguing that it was "absurd to make moan over the imagined […] degradation Benga is suffering. The pygmies are very low in the human scale." What made Ota so "entertaining" for millions of onlookers? This is a question whose answers spoke directly to the dialog of early 20th- century race relations, and award-winning journalist Newkirk presents them with clarity. VERDICT Newkirk gives us more than the tragic story of one Congolese man. She offers a look into the history of American eugenics and the concepts of racial anthropology that have served as the foundation for racial intolerance for generations. Benga's story is one part of a bigger problem—a problem that continues to exist—and Newkirk doesn't allow us to forget him. Nor should she.—Erin Entrada Kelly, Philadelphia

Library Journal

2015-03-11
A shocking tale of a young African taken from his home for the purposes of Western science throws into relief the turn-of-the-century's ill-conceived intentions and prejudice. It is hard to fathom placing a young Central African man of "pygmy" descent in a cage at the Bronx Zoo with an orangutan as a companion to be mocked and stared at by thousands of visitors, unless it was part of some weird art or political installation. Indeed, Newkirk (Journalism/New York Univ.; Within the Veil: Black Journalists, White Media, 2000, etc.) notes in her work of careful scholarship how the director and chief curator of the New York Zoological Gardens, William Temple Hornaday, was delighted by his 1906 acquisition of the "pygmy," who would undoubtedly attract hordes of viewers, with no idea how offensive the exhibit might be, especially to African-Americans. Newkirk has to fill in many blank spaces in this wrenching story of Ota Benga—his name would be spelled a dozen different ways over the course of his short life—who was eventually "rescued" by the director of an African-American orphanage in Brooklyn, with the aim of educating him to become a missionary to be sent back to Africa. Specifically, Benga never told his own story, so Newkirk has pursued the villain, Samuel Phillips Verner, a South Carolina-born racist who became a minister and went to Africa, only to ingratiate himself with the officials of King Leopold's Belgium Congo in plundering African artifacts (sold to the Smithsonian and other American institutions) and preying on native tribes. The "diminutive forest people" would be his particular prize, first conveyed for exhibit at the 1904 World's Fair in St. Louis. Benga was the victim of the era's flourishing eugenics, and the author notes that he likely suffered from PTSD. An inspired and moving work of intrepid scholarship.

Kirkus Reviews