when he lived in a week cell, so thank you all for being here. so black lives matter it's a centuries-old cry of the dogged plea over far-flung people is what was conveyed to thomas jefferson in 1791 when a council quote it is the indispensable duty of those who maintained for themselves the rights of human nature to extend their power and influence to the relief of every part of the union race. it's what inspired my research into the story of ota benga who in 1906 garner global headlines after he was exhibited in the

bronx zoo monkey house at times with an orangutan. but why some ask would a disgrace african who did not leave behind any records nor perform any remarkable feats merit a biography. when i began my research five years ago i could not know that some would see his life as a metaphor for black lives today. but i somehow knew that his story mattered that how he came to be so monumentally degraded in a world-class city at the dawn of the 20th century during the progressive era mattered. so i began to explore at this historical case by interrogating what had already been written. i began with a book published in 1992 that had for many become the definitive account of ota benga's light. ota benga was written by philip

werner redford the grandson of the african explorer who brought ota benga to the united states. according to the introduction the book was the story of friendship between ota benga and samuel werner. from the first few pages i was intrigued by the notion that werner had forged a friendship with his african subject who then somehow ended up in a zoo being displayed with apes. the color color for narrative was akin to the tale of robinson crusoe and his sidekick friday but had no citations and was almost entirely based on verner's uncorroborated accounts. the book nonetheless etched verner's tale of friendship into ota benga within the history. i sought out other sources. i turned to the wildlife conservation society better

known as the bronx zoo. it had recorded sub five's exhibition. the plot fit in. gathering of animals in an conventional history of the new york zoological society first published in 1974 explores the history of the zoo beginning with its creation in 1899. in recounting the episode william bridges assumes curator publications contended that it was unlikely that benga had been displayed in caged at all. quote was ota benga exhibited like some strange rare animal he asked. that he was locked behind bars in the bear cage to be stared at during certain hours seems unlike leahy said. patently ignoring evidence in the zoological society archives there verified ota benga's daily

exhibition in the cage at specific times of the day. then any purported effort to clarify what had transpired, bridges claimed that benga had entered a cage to play with the chimpanzees that accompanied from africa quote information about him was hung on the cage when he was in it. he concluded quote at this distance and time that is about all that can be said for sure except that it was all done with the best of intentions for ota benga was interesting to the new york public that had not been privileged to see benga's -- verna's. i soon learned his bewildering suggestion of doubt defied any faithful reading of the archival records. benga's exhibition in a bear cage be stared at during certain

hours is unequivocally documented in newspaper articles correspondence and in a published article in the zoological society's own journal. this was just one of many examples of deception i discovered by her chest and custodian of history. meanwhile, the voluminous archival records that expose key aspects of ota benga's life in the circumstances of his capturing captivity have largely gone untouched. we visited this for a rare look at the fickleness of history and raises troubling questions about what we know and what we think we know about our past. while ota benga did not leave behind his own papers others including samuel verner did. mountains of archival records, ship passenger records newspaper

magazine articles anthropological census data photographs recorded recollections of those who knew ota benga and the era enabled me to retrace benga's footsteps through the congo europe and the united states and what i discovered exceeded my worst suspicions about his relationship with samuel verner. in the process i was able to see ever more clearly how the racial attitudes of new york city's social elite were embedded in scholarship, government policies and popular culture and why some of those attitudes lingers still but first a little bit about samuel verner. he was the first child of the slaveholding family in south carolina who came of age during the virulent backlash to the gains that blacks had made during reconstruction. in about white supremacist he

went to the congo as a missionary and then as a man determined to make his fortune in a country that was being plundered by king leopold the second. as millions of congolese were being enslaved and murdered or maimed under the guise of civilized man verner left his mission posts capitalizing on the turmoil there. in 1904 verner return returned to the congo as a special agent for the world's fair. his assignment was to bring back so-called pygmies to exhibit at the fair. fair organizers hoped to map human progress from the lowest to the highest civilizations was so-called pygmies didn't diminutive people of the central african forest deemed the least civilized. heavily armed and with the approval of king leopold and u.s. government officials verner went hunting for the pygmies.

benga was the first of its captives in which he wrote an article entitled my untold adventures while hunting pygmies in the congo. in lectures and articles verner promoted ota benga is a cannibal noting his pointed teeth which in reality were fashionable across the congo. two years later verner temporarily housed or turned benga over to the bronx zoo where he was exhibited in the monkey house in september of 1906. buschmann shares a cage with bronx apes was the headline in "the new york times" on september 9, 1906. tens of thousands of new yorkers flocked to the zoo to see sub by this esol and they sat and stupefied silence. ministers protest fell on deaf ears. maya mcclellan refused to meet with the ministers are intervene

intervene. the zoological society secretary madison grant also held firm. zoo director william hornaday the blessings of his elite superiors was defined same the exhibit would go on as the sun that quote each afternoon in september. ota benga he insisted quote had the best room in the monkey house. "new york times" editors were dismayed by the protest. they rode quote we do not understand all the emotion which others are expressing in a matter. ota benga according to our information is a normal specimen of this race or tribe but the brand is much developed as are those of his other members whether they held to the illustrations of arrested development and really closer to the apes than the other african savages or whether they are

viewed as the degenerate descendents of ordinary blacks they are of equal interest to the student of acknowledging and can be studied with profit" back. it was benga's resistance resistance to captivity that ultimately convinced of zoo officials that he was too much to handle. he was finally in test -- and trust the care of reverend james gordon at the orphanage asylum hearing or glenn. "spectacle" recounts benga's stay in weeks fill his journey to ensberg virginia and the return to the orphanage farm in long island where he lived a lonely life at st. james. in 1910 he returned to lynchburg where he worked on a tobacco farm and did odd jobs. he also became a beloved companion to neighborhood children to whom he talked the ways of the forest hunting fishing picking berries and roots. in lynchburg he was embraced by the towns black community that

included and spencer who would go on to become an acclaimed poet and have actually done ota benga's teacher at the seminary. he would spend his final years trying to find his way back home or trying to adjust to american life. so i will read a small excerpt from that period in lynchburg where he bonded with a group of voice including and spencer sund chauncy. >> in lynchburg benga had found a surrogate home and family and would learn their customs and the contours and boundaries of the binding blackness. when he crossed into neighboring cottonwood to white working-class community he was heckled and pelted with rocks. he would come back and ask why they did that chauncy recalled years later. he didn't understand. however long before he arrived in lynchburg ota benga had seen

the scallops horn on the faces of the congo and the jeering crowds in st. louis and among the spectators outside the cage at the monkey house. he learned learn to live within the carefully drawn lines of lynchburg's black community and practice customs that people are crafted from memory centuries-old oppression. their sermons and spiritual city may have recognized the sorrow as familiar as the forestry. they were the descendents of the people who knew the despair of displacement and the loss of language and friendships family rituals sites scents and sounds. if my daughter is here she is about to say there she goes again. she's about to cry. these people cobbled together from afar continent made a new rebuked and scorned and yet gerrer him to their bosom. some have lost loved ones to slavery, some board the children

of their flavors yet withal the travails they had made room for homeless stranger. benga had only memories and no one but he could no what form they took. was he asleep troubled by nightmares of being stalked by howling mobs are being cage with its? was a haunted by visions of murdered loved ones or chained congolese? did he drift into gatherings of canon clan only to wake of the loan? some nights beneath the star speckled sky the boys would watch benga build a fire and dance and sing around it. chauncey gregory bull of britain and their friends were enraptured as they circled the flame hopping and singing as if they weren't there. there were no older than 10 too young to grasp the poignancy of the ancient ritual with the urgency of benga's refrains and

i will end there and take your questions. thank you. [applause] does no one have questions? you have all read the book? >> i have heard a little bit about this on abc world news last night. >> i was up last night doing it. >> i fell asleep new -- knowing it was coming today. what eventually happened to him? >> he took his life. i should have said spoiler alert alert. his age is contested. samuel verner offered many different ages for him. he offered many different accounts of how he was captured

and tamed or whatever the word is. but from the best evidence available if anyone has a copy of the book if you look at that picture that picture was taken two years before he was exhibited in the bronx zoo. here is -- he is clearly a child and later in his life he said that he was 13 when he was captured, which would mean when he was in the bronx zoo he would have been 15 and when he died he would have been 25. >> good evening. i want to thank you so botched for shining a light on this young man. also do you have books today for sale? >> yes, i hope so. >> wonderful and then another

question is what was life like for him and the howard collier orphanage where they turned children inmates and that type of thing? >> well it was a lot better than being in the bronx zoo monkey house and he was given his own room where he could smoke and do pretty much what he wanted that of course he was still isolated from the children. he could not have real human interactions with people. he was still alienated from his country and his people. he had limited english. at that time he said he spoke maybe 100 words so he wanted to go home. that is what he wanted. he wanted to go home but it seemed that they were very nice to him.

mary gordon who was the house mother was described in every account i have ever read of her as very maternal, very warm and loving and she was really beloved by the children they are long after they left. they would still refer to her as mama. [inaudible] i don't know if you address of the new book that winter of examples of this? didn't the chicago world's fair have ethnic exhibits? >> they were called human human zoos that they think the difference between what was very popular particularly in europe at the time of the century and at the close of the 19th century human zoos were very popular with primitive people that they were people exhibited with people. ota benga was exhibited with an orangutan and with monkeys in a monkey house.

so it was up to the spectator to decide whether or not he was fully human. >> hi. i have heard of ota benga as a youngster and i want to know what does that reveal in psychology of how people viewed him and did they actually think he was a monkey? >> for some reason i never loved zoos and that's particularly so when i went to the monkey house. if you look at a monkeys and a look at the apes there seems to be some recognition. what are you looking at? you know i always felt really uneasy when i made eye contact because they are so intelligent. so if you think about our ability to look at caged animals

who are highly intelligent pigs are highly intelligent. but look what we do to them so if people are not fully convinced that he is human it's the same thing. so i don't think they thought he was a full human being. they thought he was subhuman because why else would he be in a cage in the monkey house? >> good evening. i want to thank you for doing this. this story resonated with me because it makes me wonder sometimes on any given sunday, i go to church in harlem and every time i go to church their size a crowd of tourists lined up and they are taking photos. i always wonder is there a correlation there in research?

have you seen anything that proves or shows this fascination with seeing i guess si would say what black people or maybe in this case we were talking in terms of primitive people being seen as objects so being objectified? >> once you discard or diminish someone's humanity and objective by them than you can make a spectacle of them. you couldn't really do it unless he you are crazy to a person to someone that you recognize as a human being. since these ideas of black life were not just the ideas of marginalized crack pots, this was rooted in science that blacks were at degenerative race, that they were closer to apes than other human beings and for so long that idea have

circulated in the highest echelons of the academy. it should be no surprise that 100 years later while you would not or i hope you wouldn't see a black person exhibited in a zoo but there are some of those subconscious biases that may explain this rash of police killings of unarmed black voice in men who were being shot in the back people being riddled with bullets while you sit in your car. i don't think it's a conscious thing but when you have those kinds of ideas so deeply embedded in everything that america is it really should not surprise us that some of those ideas are lingering but they have morphed and taken on new forms.

>> thanks so much for this book. i have read a great portion of it and it's fantastic. >> he has from medgar evers the center for black history. >> please talk about some of the challenges you had in your research because i find it very fascinating. >> the challenge is psychologically? >> and the research itself. >> the research was challenging as you can well imagine. doing research on marginalized people is like really tests your chops as a researcher. i had some experience because my last book letters from black america was all about going into the archives and looking for letters that many people didn't think slaves wrote letters or

the enslaved i should say. people from all walks of life wrote letters and black people always wrote letters so there is just this, because our lives are not considered meaningful it's harder to find evidence of our lives. going into the archives i couldn't go into the archives up with whole papers of ota benga so you have to look in unexpected places and you have to look harder and you have to go to the people who kept him. you have to go wherever you think there may be something. after a while the interesting thing about this project, while it was so horrid the first two years and at one point i thought

i may have to give the money back. i'm not going to be able to do this. it's too hard. things just started tumbling out of closets. it's like when you look so long it's like you hit something and then it started unfolding. i felt like i was being stalked by a ota benga. look there are, oh no what they are. i was having these incredible finds. i couldn't have even imagined that i would be able to literally trace his footsteps on her almost daily basis in 1904 in 1905, in 1906. i could never have anticipated the kind of detail that i was able to get of his life. that's because the elite people of new york society kept a lot

of records. they didn't feel the need to hide anything because who was going to look for the life of ota benga wax they didn't see me coming. >> a pleasant good evening. really appreciate you taking the time out of your life to put this together and to bring ota benga to light and i guess this isn't one question, it's a bunch of things. i understand the climate of this nation, that climate of this work and how peoples of this world somehow end up all pressed an understanding that me being a

man and compounding that together and reading this book what should it do for me? this might be an obvious question but i would like you to articulate that. >> i think what it might do for you first of all it substantiates suspicions many of us had that this stuff is not just happenstance. it's deeply deeply deeply-rooted. so much of the scholarship is kind of not out there circulating so we all have a feeling about things but then you are being told that oh you know we have a rock obama in the white house and you are paranoid and if you got shot in the back 20 times you were probably doing something and so on and on.

i think maybe you cannot draw a straight line from 1906 to this period. it helps inform where we are today and it shows us the foundation of many of the ideas that are still percolating today today. what it should do for you humanity is a tricky thing. when ota benga's humanity diminish the people who diminished his humanity were diminished more and i think our humanity we have to feel good about our humanity and i think that quote from benjamin verner when he is challenging thomas jefferson when he has this view of blacks is somehow inferior he

is saying this is your manatee too brother. so it's kind of a call. it's kind of a call to our collective conscience. like come on people, enough. so i don't know. this book is the story of ota benga and it's also a mirror to our society during that period. it's not really connecting dots to today. i'm doing that now when you ask me a question that you may see something in there that will help you connect some dots. >> good evening. thank you. the commonality of humans is that the turn of the last century, i mean that was kind of

how could they? >> there are still meant human zoos over the past 10 years. >> i wondered what your thoughts were about the whole idea of poor tourism where people go to brazil and go on tours or they go to kenya and going to the -- and they are literally sitting on the bus and paying someone to point out that's where someone lives and that's where they go to the bathroom. i feel like the human zoo thing but it's also poor tourism and the marketing ad. look at how the other people in the world live and i'm not sure it's like a call to action or more like they live like that and i live like this. it's actually quite comments i wondered wondered if he had any thoughts on that. >> i think all kinds of people travel and all kinds of people look for different reasons. some people do things with what

they take in and some people don't. i just think when you are in touch with your humanity it's just a good thing. it's just a good thing so i don't have anything more to say past that it back to what you are asking, one of the things that i found inspiring in recounting his life is to look at the people who defy the conventions of their time the racial attitudes of their time stepped out of a box in take a chance and protested what was happening. i found that incredibly inspiring. the first minister to protest ota benga's was not a minister is some accounts had said. he was a baptist minister but he was a canadian minister who was white and his church calvary baptist church is on west 57th

street. he was a very prominent and eminent adviser to presidents. you can do great things when you are in touch with your humanity. >> i was wondering whether when you were doing your research you were able to speak to the left verner about the book that he wrote about his grandfather? >> know no and nor did i want to because he never met ota benga. he had nothing to offer. i was interested in archival evidence and so i saw all of his grandfather's papers. he didn't do what the evidence. he didn't deal with and i didn't care why he did or didn't. it wasn't my interest.

this was a historical project so i went back to where i could find -- there are a lot of people that have opinions about what happened but they didn't know so i basically went back to the archives. >> hi, thank you for your wonderful talk. i'm just curious if you ever came across any zoo administrators? did any of them ever express remorse or knowledge the inhumanity of what they did? >> no. it's kind of disappointing because even after ota benga died there were really callous comments made about him being a savage but there was no remorse. what they did do is they doctored up the story of what happened. and he went from being a caged exhibit to being a zoo employee

or someone was there helping out but never an expression of remorse. on the contrary samuel verner lived many years after this and he did express remorse. or so i heard he did. i should take that back -- back. his grandson said he expressed remorse let me be clear. >> good evening. i went to school for minutes from new york city technical college. i started in 83 and finished in 86. >> congratulations. >> thank you for that. i was a dental lab technician student. we use a variety of equipment and we had a korean student in class with us. i noticed that whenever one of

the brown kids would use a piece of equipment he wasn't -- he wouldn't use it behind them. he would wait for someone else to use it and then he would use it. just bear with me for a second. one day was sitting at my desk and my station -- though his name was. i said why do you wait for someone else to use the equipment and i will call someone by name after they had used it and he said i don't want to use it after you. i said well why not? you are an animal. this is 1985. i said what did you just say? i am 17, 18. my initial thought was something different. i didn't have the maturity that i have now so i said what he talking about? a couple of the fellows in the

classroom relax. i said hold on, not funny. it and he says well you have a tail, right? he said you have a tail, don't you? i said no i don't have a tail and he said sure you do. i saw it in the books. i said how long have you been in this country? he said six ears. the professor stopped the class and we are talking to him and he said to the professors caucasian he said hugh where did you get this? in the book. he said tomorrow we wanted to bring those books and they brought those books in the referenced how his parents taught him this before he came here to stay clear about brown people. as a look at the news and watch the internet and i see the disconnect from brown people

it's not that far to me. it makes sense. if this is what you are taught and it's what you think it's easier to do some of the things that are being done. i have two sons and i try to teach them this without fear but with knowledge going back to what you talked about a minute ago. what do you do as a brown person tax at 4:30 in the morning i wake up and i say -- i haven't seen him since i graduated in 1986 but he came back to me and i said that the problem. it's actually documented somewhere and being taught. it makes it easier to do some of the things. >> it was taught for a very long time. >> i used to live in england and

i remember when i went there first because i'm from the caribbean. i was standing at the bus bus stop and the lady saw me and she is black. she was in england since 1940 and she said to me where u. are you from? i told her and she said oh what do you do? i said i'm a midwife. she said i am so glad. she said when i came here there weren't a lot of whack people here in england and they thought we had tails. and she said i'm so glad that more black people are coming here and babies are being born in the hospital so they can see we don't have any tail. >> what year is this? >> this was in 1962. she said they thought when we were born, black people our

tails were removed and she was so happy. she said i'm so glad you are here. >> and you didn't have a tail. >> good evening. definite look forward to reading your book. just a couple of questions. where was he buried and where his remains ever sent back to the congo? >> you guys are asking questions that are so contested. so he had a proper funeral because he was a beloved member of the community and he had a nice home. he was buried in the segregated segregated -- segregated city cemetery but today they are not quite sure if his remains are

still there because it was so overgrown and there is oral history that suggests he was reinterred and taken to another cemetery that have become popular with the lynchburg seminary community. so they are have actually been searches and lynchburg. if you go to lynchburg and you say ota benga everyone knows who he is. today he is still an adored figure and everyone wants to know where he is. so i don't know. if there is even a clue people are prepared to pay for dna to do the dna test. it's that deep they are so anyway he is buried somewhere and lynchburg in one of two cemeteries. >> one other thing to the

congolese government ever asked for his remains? >> you mean today? there have been efforts by some to reclaim his remains. >> thank you very much. i came out tonight because of just rot interest being caught by the cover of the book. it's hard not to make those linear ties to what is happening today and has been happening all along. i say that as even our president of the united states many times over the last eight years has been caricatured as a monkey. c and so has his wife. >> and so has his wife. i saw 12 or three months ago. this is an image problem that we

have been burdened with in our community so that is pretty linear. one thing i have to say just this past weekend i purchased the book four years ago called without sanctuary and there's literally picture of -- and write about that 1906. matt. >> it was a horrible. math. we hear a lot about the south that there has been very little written about what happened in newark city which is why was so interested. i knew that history of the epidemic lynchings throughout the south but i didn't know what was going on here. i knew about the civil war when all of those african-americans were beaten and killed by mobs and some are hung in trees and hanged in trees in washington square park.

i knew that history but then what happened? it seemed like there was this drop off and it was just like the end of the era server that is okay. the story allows you to sort of lean and and look at what was going on in high places and low. i appreciate your comments. >> that's the point. that is what i really appreciate appreciate. mass incarceration seems to have a lot to do with the fact that we are very comfortable with putting people of color who are black and now behind bars in zoo or in prison. even my sons at the commentary here is sitting to my right when i opened this book of 400 pages a picture book of people hanging from trees he said when was the last time you opened up book?

i said i haven't opened it in four years because it's so hard to look at but i appreciate what you have done because this story of telling us the story of ota benga gives justice and peace to ota benga and that's the only way we can tell the story but his book and read two other so i appreciate that. >> that's another initiative is to tell the story. so many people wanted to get close to his voice. thank you. >> one more question about. >> i wanted to ask you, you may have mentioned "the new york times" and the articles that were written of ota benga at the time. there were numerous african-american dailies and i was curious their opinions regarding ota benga at some of the stories and articles that

might have been written. >> the black press did write about it and in fact it was covered nationally by people who didn't know about the story. it was covered by practical every paper across the country the "washington post"" the post-dispatch. if you are black anywhere in this country you would have known about ota benga. so the black press did write about him. not a lot, but they did. one last question. >> thank you so much for coming in tonight. it's great to hear the answers to your questions. i heard some themes that spoke to me but did you have in doing this did you have themes that you were hoping people would pick up on for the conversation around the table and people are gathered to talk about race?

>> i guess i don't do my work like that. i don't sit around thinking what white people should know. i think of all people. i don't work that way. i don't work thinking of this audience or that. i am sort of the truth junkie and trying to get at that and some of it isn't comfortable even for us. i'm about humanity and if we can all get closer to that that would be a good thing. thank you. i think that's it for you. >> if you want to take one or two more. i don't want to cut anyone off. >> i would like to ask about if any of the evidence to some of

his interest at the theological seminary. >> it was a seminary so he was taking a lot of classical academic courses at the school trained missionaries had trained many. in fact some famous africans have studied their and gone back and started missionaries in africa. we can see the classes he took. he did not stay there long. [inaudible] >> would have been so great. he may have written something. there is just no record of it. >> you mentioned earlier that the concept of human zoos are still going on. where exactly is this practice still going on?

>> i don't do research on humans but they are our people throughout the time i've doing this project sending these articles on human zoos. the last two that i saw one was in germany and one was in spain. >> to the bronx zoo at any point ever have to pay any punitive damages? >> would they pay to? >> i don't know. >> the city supported the zoo too. >> i wanted to ask if anything came out of this project and what your next project is going to be. >> i wish i had insight into my next project. part of it will be to sleep a little bit more, to rest a little bit more see my friends. people say where do you go?

i go into a whole. when i'm doing research i really kind of disappear so i'm happy to reemerge and see my friends see my family. that is the immediate project. >> thank you so much. [applause] thank you all for coming. the book is available in the gift shop right up there and she has graciously agreed to sign some books. feel free to come up if you have a book already. ♪ ♪