A century ago, a Belgian Congo pygmy named Ota Benga was displayed in the Bronx Zoo's monkey cage, an exhibition that outraged black Americans. Producer Joe Richman has this profile.

1906 Ota Benga arrived at the Bronx Zoo one day late in the summer of 1906 wearing a white linen suit. He was lugging a wooden bow, a set of arrows, and a pet chimpanzee. Twenty-three years old ...

Ota Benga, a 4ft 11ins Congolese pygmy, was kept in a cage in New York's Bronx Zoo in 1906 as part of an exhibit which saw him perform in front of visitors that jeered and teased him.

For a few yards of cloth and some salt, Samuel Verner, an American missionary and explorer, bought a young man named Ota Benga in the Belgian Congo in 1903. Ota Benga was a Pygmy who had been ...

After surviving a Belgium sponsored pygmy slaughter in his native Congo, which took his wife and children, Benga, who was about 4'11" tall with teeth filed sharp in a traditional manner, was sold ...

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 ...

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 ...

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.