Ota Benga

Mbuti pygmy featured in an exhibit in 1904

Ota Benga (c. 1883 – March 20, 1916) was a Mbuti (Congo pygmy) former slave and performer at an exhibit at the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis, Missouri, and as a human zoo exhibit in 1906 at the Bronx Zoo. Benga had been purchased from native African slave traders by Samuel Phillips Verner, a businessman searching for African people for the exhibition, who brought him to the United States and hired him for stagework.

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