Bought from a slave trader and put on display at the Bronx zoo: the strange, sad story of Ota Benga, a Pygmy with filed teeth brought from the Congo to America in 1906. Here are a couple of contemporary news accounts of the controversial exhibit. After the zoo, Benga tried to make a life in America, studying to be a missionary. "But what he really wanted to do was to tell everyone in this country that his people were dying, and why. I think he thought that eventually they'd listen. But they never did. That, to me, is the real tragedy." In 1916, at the age of 32, he built a ceremonial fire, chipped off the caps on his teeth, performed a final tribal dance, and shot himself with a stolen pistol. Creationists say the story illustrates "the racism of evolutionary theory" and "the horrors that evolutionary theory has brought to society."
posted by CunningLinguist on Aug 7, 2006 - 35 comments

"I didn't know Jack London was such a good photographer." Jack London and his wife Charmian took photos several hours after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire, and he wrote an eyewitness account for Collier's (it was the most he was ever paid per word--25 cents--for his writing). [more inside]
posted by kirkaracha on Jan 6, 2006 - 17 comments