Salt was the price
for his captured life,
this Congolese man
in slave trader hands
Ota Benga
In nineteen oh four
brought to these shores,
so others could stare
at the St. Louis World’s Fair
Ota Benga
Just another addition
to their living exhibition
Ota Benga
“Savages” on display,
never mind their dismay
Step up for your view
of our human zoo
and see those like
Ota Benga
In just two years’ time
in the Bronx Zoo we find
Ota Benga
For your entertainment today,
A human being on display,
Come turn your gaze
to a man in a cage,
Ota Benga
To gloat superiority, self-proclaimed,
over someone so “untamed,”
twice as many would now go
to see their “freak” in the show,
Ota Benga
At the primate house,
bones scattered about
to create the illusion
of a cannibalistic conclusion
to the eating habits of
Ota Benga
Evolution’s missing link,
they claimed with a wink,
Ota Benga
The crowd poked and they jeered,
their manner cavalier
as they laughed at the sight of
Ota Benga
As protests were groaned,
“It is absurd to make moan
over the imagined humiliation
and (the supposed) degradation,”
The New York Times did wail,
“very low in the human scale”
they ranked
Ota Benga
When the Zoo’s history we impart
this will be our “most amusing” part,
the Zoo director said of the caged
Ota Benga
When finally free,
homeward bound he would be,
Ota Benga
But his return hopes would unravel
with the cessation of passenger ship travel
World War I had begun,
so he came upon a gun
Ota Benga
A life forced, undesired,
No crowd would see when he fired
the bullet into his heart,
Ota Benga
A segregated, unmarked grave
No one bothered to say
that here lies
Ota Benga
In a country that still
whitewashes its ills,
our hands are stained
with the blood of
Ota Benga
2 Oct 2020
Thanks to Rob Huber for suggesting I explore human zoos as a possibility for a poem. The resources I used:
The Man Who Was Caged in a Zoo - The Guardian
Human Zoos: America's Forgotten History of Scientific Racism
Spectacle - One on One interview with Pamela Newark
The Tragic Life of Ota Benga - YouTube
CBC - Human Zoos: A Shocking History of Shame and Exploitation
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