In 1906, a Pygmy named Ota Benga was put on display at the Bronx Zoo. While such an exhibition seems inconceivable today, the Pygmies of central Africa are still being marginalized and exploited. As recently as July, Pygmies in the Republic of the Congo were being housed in a tent at a zoo, forced to scrounge for firewood to cook their food as tourists watched (http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/em/fr/-/2/hi/africa/6898241.stm.)
LynchburgCollege, along with Virginia University of Lynchburg and SweetBriarCollege, is helping sponsor an international conference on their continuing plight on October 25-27: “Lynchburg, Ota Benga, and the Empowerment of the Pygmies.”
Lynchburg may seem an unlikely place to talk about Pygmies, but the tragic life of Ota Benga came to an end here. The conference will explore not only Ota Benga’s life, but western intervention and occupation of Africa in the late nineteenth century and the Batwa (Pygmy) role in central African history through the present.
Special guests and speakers invited to the conference include:
- Pygmy leaders from the African Congress of the Pygmies (CONAFPY): President Antoine Lonoa, Vice President Grégoire Bokungu Ifangwa, and Thérèse Pambo;
- Carrie McCray, now 92, who knew Ota Benga and will speak on “Ota Benga Under My Mother’s Roof.”
- Dr. Phillips Verner Bradford, author of the book, Ota Benga: The Pygmy in the Zoo, and grandson of the explorer who brought Ota Benga to America;
- Mitch Keller of The New York Times, who wrote the article, “The Scandal at the Zoo;”
- Juan Fernando Nuñez, associate social affairs officer, Secretariat of the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, United Nations; and
- Representatives from the embassies of Cameroon and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Conference panels will be held at LynchburgCollege on October 25, at Virginia University of Lynchburg on October 26, and at SweetBriarCollege on October 27. For a full schedule of events, go to http://www.lynchburg.edu/x9013.xml.
All events are free and open to the public. Registration is required. Due to limited space, registration is limited to the first 200 persons at Lynchburg and Sweet Briar colleges. Registration is limited to 500 at VUL.Registration deadline is October 15. Registrants do not have to attend the entire conference. They may attend only one day or a choice of days.
Register on line at: https://www.lynchburg.edu/x9016.xml. In lieu of a registration fee, donations are being accepted for the Pygmy Travel Fund at LynchburgCollege: https://www.lynchburg.edu/x9045.xml.
In conjunction with the conference, Amazement Square is hosting a Pygmy Music and Culture night from 4 to 6 p.m. October 10 in its Imagination Studio. Discover more about the music of the Pygmies by making drums and rattles. The children’s museum is also having a Pygmy Woven Basket craft table set up from September 18 to October 29. Visitors will be able to make their own basket from craft materials. Finally, Amazement Square is holding an art contest for middle- and high-school students. The Ota Benga Inspired Juried Art Exhibition will be on display from October 23 to November 28.
African Art from the Collection will be on display at LynchburgCollege from October 20 to December 9. African baskets recently donated to the Daura Gallery by the LaurenRogersMuseum of Art, Laurel, Mississippi, feature a wide assortment of materials and techniques.
Background
Ota Benga was born in about 1883 in what is now known as the Democratic Republic of the Congo, whose mighty river arcs through the Equatorial rainforest where the Pygmies, or little people, live. At the time, the territory was under control of the Belgians, who plundered the land for ivory and rubber. They forced the skilled Pygmy hunters, including Ota Benga, to gather ivory. Upon his return from one such hunt, Ota Benga found that his village had been destroyed, and his wife and two children murdered. He was sold in the slave market, where he was purchased by the Rev. Samuel Phillips Verner. A missionary who had spent a year in the Congo, Verner had agreed to buy Pygmies for the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair, and returned with Ota Benga and four other Batwa Pygmies. After being exhibited at the fair, Ota Benga visited New York before returning home to the Congo.
Ota Benga helped Verner on later expeditions to collect African artifacts. After Ota Benga’s second wife was bitten by a poisonous snake and died, he decided to return to New York with Verner. Ota Benga ended up staying at the Museum of Natural History, where he roamed the building and helped the guards. He tried to get a permanent position there, but the deal fell through and he ended up being housed at the Bronx Zoo. He was exhibited in a cage with chimpanzees, drawing crowds and attention from The New York Times. It was this news that created a link to Lynchburg.
The Rev. William Henry Moses, a graduate of Virginia Baptist Seminary in Lynchburg, was disgusted with the zoo’s display of Ota Benga. Moses and other African American ministers obtained his release. Eventually, Ota Benga asked if he could move to Lynchburg, which offered a warmer climate and a haven at Virginia Baptist Seminary, a leading educational institution for African Americans at that time. In January 1910, he headed to Lynchburg where he lived with the family of Professor Gregory Willis Hayes, president of the seminary. The diminutive Ota Benga took classes, but also taught youngsters to hunt, fish, and gather wild honey. One of those boys was Chauncey Spencer, son of Harlem Renaissance poet Anne Spencer.
Ota Benga tried to adapt to western ways, and even had his pointed teeth capped. He became known as “Otto Bingo” and worked at a Lynchburg tobacco factory, but longed to return to Africa. Unable to save enough for the fare, on March 20, 1916, the spring equinox, he built a fire, broke the caps off his teeth, danced around the fire chanting traditional songs, and then shot himself in the heart. He was buried in an unmarked grave somewhere in Lynchburg.
Interest in Ota Benga resurfaced in 2004 when Dr. W.S. Dibinga, a HarvardUniversity professor, came to Lynchburg in search of Ota Benga’s grave. Dr. Dibinga obtained a paper on Ota Benga written by LynchburgCollege student Katie Hadley Gordon ’96. The Harvard professor ended up giving a presentation on Ota Benga and the history of King Leopold’s Congo for LC’s Senior Symposium in the fall of 2005.Gordon continued her research and discovered that Samuel Verner’s homestead was not far from her home. She developed a relationship with his grandson, Dr. Phillips Bradford, who shared unpublished information about the relationship between his grandfather and Ota Benga. Those efforts have now come full circle with this conference.
Sponsors
The conference is a Signature Event of the Jamestown 400th Anniversary through a connection with HBCUs of Virginia, and is made possible by the Dolan Peace and Justice Series, Virginia Foundation for the Humanities, the “We the People” initiative of the National Endowment for the Humanities, and sponsored by Lynchburg College in conjunction with Sweet Briar College, Virginia University of Lynchburg, Randolph College, Amazement Square (www.amazementsquare.org) and other community partners. Conference events do not include meals. For more information contact Pat Price at 434/544-8576 or by e-mail at price.p@lynchburg.edu.
Media queries may be directed to Shannon Brennan, director of media relations at LynchburgCollege, at 434/544-8609 or brennan.s@lynchburg.edu.
