Ota Benga

Ota Benga was a Mbuti former slave who was forced to perform in an exhibit at the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis, Missouri, and as a human zoo exhibit in 1906 at the Bronx Zoo. Benga had been purchased from native African slave traders by Samuel Phillips Verner, a businessman searching for African people for the exhibition, who brought him to the United States and hired him for stagework. While at the Bronx Zoo, Benga was allowed to walk the grounds before and after he was exhibited in the zoo's Monkey House. Benga was placed in a cage with an orangutan, regarded as both an offense to his humanity and a promotion of social Darwinism.