Spectacle: The Astonishing Life of Ota Benga
3.5/5
()
Currently unavailable
Currently unavailable
About this ebook
2016 NAACP Image Award Winner
An award-winning journalist reveals a little-known and shameful episode in American history, when an African man was used as a human zoo exhibit—a shocking story of racial prejudice, science, and tragedy in the early years of the twentieth century in the tradition of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Devil in the White City, and Medical Apartheid.
In 1904, Ota Benga, a young Congolese “pygmy”—a person of petite stature—arrived from central Africa and was featured in an anthropology exhibit at the St. Louis World’s Fair. Two years later, the New York Zoological Gardens displayed him in its Monkey House, caging the slight 103-pound, 4-foot 11-inch tall man 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, the international controversy it inspired, and his efforts to adjust to American life. It also reveals why, decades later, the man most responsible for his exploitation would be hailed as his friend and savior, while those who truly fought for Ota have been banished to the shadows of history. Using primary historical documents, Pamela Newkirk traces Ota’s tragic life, from Africa to St. Louis to New York, and finally to Lynchburg, Virginia, where he lived out the remainder of his short life.
Illuminating this unimaginable event, Spectacle charts the evolution of science and race relations in New York City during the early years of the twentieth century, exploring this racially fraught era for Africa-Americans and the rising tide of political disenfranchisement and social scorn they endured, forty years after the end of the Civil War. Shocking and compelling Spectacle is a masterful work of social history that raises difficult questions about racial prejudice and discrimination that continue to haunt us today.
Pamela Newkirk
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.
Read more from Pamela Newkirk
Spectacle: The Astonishing Life of Ota Benga Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Will the Last Reporter Please Turn Out the Lights: The Collapse of Journalism and What Can Be Done to Fix It Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Within the Veil: Black Journalists, White Media Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Related to Spectacle
Related ebooks
The American Slave Coast: A History of the Slave-Breeding Industry Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Lynching: The Epic Courtroom Battle That Brought Down the Klan Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Black Slaves, Indian Masters: Slavery, Emancipation, and Citizenship in the Native American South Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Worse Than Slavery Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Burning: The Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Negro Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsIda: A Sword Among Lions: Ida B. Wells and the Campaign Against Lynching Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow: The Companion to the PBS Television Series Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Nation Must Awake: My Witness to the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921 Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Stolen: Five Free Boys Kidnapped into Slavery and Their Astonishing Odyssey Home Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Mis-Education of the Negro Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsEbony and Ivy: Race, Slavery, and the Troubled History of America's Universities Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Slave in the White House: Paul Jennings and the Madisons Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Punishing the Black Body: Marking Social and Racial Structures in Barbados and Jamaica Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsStolen Childhood: Slave Youth in Nineteenth-Century America Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsIncidents in the Life of a Slave Girl Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Mastery, Tyranny, and Desire: Thomas Thistlewood and His Slaves in the Anglo-Jamaican World Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Slave Trade: The Story of the Atlantic Slave Trade: 1440-1870 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5White Women, Rape, and the Power of Race in Virginia, 1900-1960 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSexuality and Slavery: Reclaiming Intimate Histories in the Americas Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsRed Summer: The Summer of 1919 and the Awakening of Black America Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Nine Lives of a Black Panther: A Story of Survival Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Black Power: Three Books from Exile: Black Power; The Color Curtain; and White Man, Listen! Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Red Record Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Souls of Black Folk Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Contested Bodies: Pregnancy, Childrearing, and Slavery in Jamaica Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Sundown Towns: A Hidden Dimension of American Racism Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Black History For Beginners Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
African American History For You
African American Herbalism: A Practical Guide to Healing Plants and Folk Traditions Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Undeniable: Full Color Evidence of Black Israelites In The Bible Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The End of White World Supremacy: Four Speeches Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5White Like Her: My Family's Story of Race and Racial Passing Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5White Evangelical Racism: The Politics of Morality in America Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5100 Amazing Facts About the Negro with Complete Proof Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Never Caught: The Washingtons' Relentless Pursuit of Their Runaway Slave, Ona Judge Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5African Samurai: The True Story of Yasuke, a Legendary Black Warrior in Feudal Japan Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHoodoo For Beginners: An Introduction to African American Folk Magic Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Orishas: An Introduction to African Spirituality and Yoruba Religion Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A Short History of Reconstruction [Updated Edition] Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Eloquent Rage: A Black Feminist Discovers Her Superpower Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Africa's Gift to America Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Somebody's Daughter: A Memoir Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Debunking the 1619 Project: Exposing the Plan to Divide America Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5African American Fraternities and Sororities: The Legacy and the Vision Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Black Ghost of Empire: The Long Death of Slavery and the Failure of Emancipation Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Defining Moments in Black History: Reading Between the Lies Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Color of Compromise: The Truth about the American Church’s Complicity in Racism Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Systemic Racism 101: A Visual History of the Impact of Racism in America Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Don't Let Them Bury My Story: The Oldest Living Survivor of the Tulsa Race Massacre In Her Own Words Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5How We Get Free: Black Feminism and the Combahee River Collective Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Secret History of Memphis Hoodoo: Rootworkers, Conjurers, & Spirituals Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Souls of Black Folk: Original Classic Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Summary of The 1619 Project: by Nikole Hannah-Jones - A Comprehensive Summary Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBlack Fortunes: The Story of the First Six African Americans Who Escaped Slavery and Became Millionaires Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5James Baldwin: A Biography Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Devil in the Grove: Thurgood Marshall, the Groveland Boys, and the Dawn of a New America Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Reviews for Spectacle
18 ratings4 reviews
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Very interesting story I knew nothing about. Shocking how people can take someone they know nothing about and sell them to be displayed in a zoo. It just shocks me how some people treat others.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Heavy read. But worth it. Will recommend for anyone interested in US history.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Spectacle: The Astonishing Life of Ota Benga by Pamela Newkirk is a horrible book to read but it is full of information about the subject. This has spoilers...Ota Benja was taken by slavers after they killed his wife and two kids. Him and a handful of others from his village were taken for the 1904 St Louis Fair and later he was put in a cage with a chimp in NY, in a zoo in the Bronx. Here he was daily humiliated and taunted. A few black preachers started to put pressure on the owner and it took time but slowly the press started to help his plight. This book is great in going into the politics of the time, the social standing, who was in whose pocket, and the racial unrest at the time. If you are not a big history buff, this may not interest you but it did me. Big names, who was backing who, a sad situation that they let this man suffer for friendship and money. He is finally released and put in an orphanage even though he is an adult. He is taught English. He gets all he wants and asks for a job. He works at a tobacco factory for a while but he is depressed and can't go home due to WWI. He can't get away from what has been done to him. He doesn't look like anyone, he is only 4'11", 103 lbs, misses his family, his life has been nothing but abuse...and he kills himself. If that isn't enough, they make molds of his body and face and display it and they don't even give it his name. It is displayed as Pygmy. This is such a sad period in our history...I just wanted to cry for him all the way through the story. I ached and hurt for the injustice. The president of the US knew this too but his friends were friends of the NY zoo. So very sad.
1 person found this helpful
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5I wanted to love "Spectacle" but it just fell a little flat. I hadn't heard of Ota Benga in any context and appreciated all the information Newkirk offered and it's clear she did an incredible amount of research for this book. I enjoyed the structure of the story: Newkirk moves back and forth in time and space, offering a broad view and then zeroing in on different aspects of Ota Benga's story and the context around him. Where I lost interest was in some of these contextual pieces Newkirk included. There were times I just wasn't interested in the tangent I was reading. It was almost TOO much information and I definitely felt overloaded. Where Newkirk really excelled was displaying the nuanced complexity of Ota Benga's story and the way narratives are shaped, distorted, and laced with agendas.