Spectacle

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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his friend and savior, while those who truly fought for Ota have been banished to the shadows of history Using primary historical documents, Pamela Newkirk traces Ota s tragic life, from Africa to St Louis to New York, and finally to Lynchburg, Virginia, where he lived out the remainder of his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. Free Read Spectacle [ author ] Pamela Newkirk [ Kindle ePUB or eBook ] – kino-fada.fr While a single volume cannot begin to right the grave injustice that so tragically marked Benga s life, it can help untangle the web of egregious fallacies that mark our historical record and dishonor his memory When we think of people in cages some things are likely to pop to mind Maybe extreme fighters going at each other for money, on TV and in arenas Maybe Rikers Island, or any the many establishments of local, state or federal incarceration that blanket the nation, holding millions of While a single volume cannot begin to right the grave injustice that so tragically marked Benga s life, it can help untangle the web of egregious fallacies that mark our historical record and dishonor his memory When we think of people in cages some things are likely to pop to mind Maybe extreme fighters going at each other for money, on TV and in arenas Maybe Rikers Island, or any the many establishments of local, state or federal incarceration that blanket the nation, holding millions of people behind bars Fans of Kurt Vonnegut might recall Billy Pilgrim on Tralfamadore in a display with Montana ...Spectacle 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 spoilersOta 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 Spectacle 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 spoilersOta 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 ...WOEFULLY OVER RESEARCHED CONFUSINGLY OVER DETAILEDDuring the first year Howard s farm added to its livestock six calves, seventy five chickens, eleven ducks, and twenty hogs and harvested eight thousand cabbages It planted thirty acres of potatoes, twelve acres of corn, and additional acres of turnips, carrots, and beets to feed the stock, wards, and staff However, by the year s end, because of a drought, the crops had not yielded as much as expected Instead of the anticipated yield of fou WOEFULLY OVER RESEARCHED CONFUSINGLY OVER DETAILEDDuring the first year Howard s farm added to its livestock six calves, seventy five chickens, eleven ducks, and twenty hogs and harvested eight thousand cabbages It planted thirty acres of potatoes, twelve acres of corn, and additional acres of turnips, carrots, and beets to feed the stock, wards, and staff However, by the year s end, because of a drought, the crops had not yielded as much as expected Instead of the anticipated yield of four thousand to five thousand bushels of potatoes, the farm had produced only 2,200 bushels and only half of that was marketable Howard hoped to have better success with the new corn crops planted on twelve acresp 209 Somewhere in this litany of names and numbers annoyingly including meaningless street addresses that Pamela Newkirk calls Spectacle The Astonishing Life of Ota Benga there might...I found it very mind boggling to read about a human being that was taken from his native land and put on display at a zoo for all of the world to see like some caged animal Even though the book is not solely about Benga, I learned so manyfacts about other things from reading this book This was a great history lesson My favorite line in this book Minik cried, you re a race of scientific criminals, I am glad enough to get away before they grab my brains and stuff them in a jar It s I found it very mind boggling to read about a human being that was taken from his native land and put on display at a zoo for all of the world to see like some caged animal Even though the book is not solely about Benga, I learned so manyfacts about other things from reading this book This was a great history lesson My favorite line in this book Minik cried, you re a race of scientific criminals, I am g...Amazing History LessonWatching a late night television show about a year ago, I was intrigued when a cast member mentioned that a man had once been featured in the Bronx Zoo When I got the opportunity to review this piece by Pamela Newkirk, I was extremely excited.If you are a lover of history then you will love this book It is filled with page after page of very detailed historical facts and quotes that the author carefully pieced together to give the reader a look into the early 1900 s and t Amazing History LessonWatching a late night television show about a year ago, I was intrigued when a cast member mentioned that a man had once been featured in the Bronx Zoo When I got the opportunity to review this piece by Pamela Newkirk, I was extremely excited.If you are a lover of history then you will love this book It is filled with page after page of very detailed historical facts and quotes that the author carefully pieced together to give the reader a look into the early 1900 s and the atmosphere of racial divide It very tediously details the life of a man by the name of Samuel Phillips Verner He was the man responsible for the capture and the ultimate dehumanization of an African man by the name of Ota Benga.The start of the book was very good and took the reader almost immediately inside the Bronx Zoo where Ota Benga lived and was displayed as any other an...Here is one of the classic cases of Man s Inhumanity Against Man It may seem hard to believe that at the start of the 20th century men who called themselves scientists, learned or even brotherly to fellow men could be so barbaric as to treat a fellow man so cruelly Whether or not these white men had next to no dealing with others of different pigmentation does not justify this brutality The fact is humans had been trading goods, other beings animal and non with different groups for hundreds Here is one of the classic cases of Man s Inhumanity Against Man It may seem hard to believe that at the start of the 20th century men who called themselves scientists, learned or even brotherly to fellow men could be so barbaric as to treat a fellow man so cruelly Whether or not these white men had next to no dealing with others of different pigmentation does not justify this brutality The fact is humans had been trading goods, other beings animal and non with different groups for hundreds of years refutes the useless argument that white people never interacted with darker hued people and so treated them badly out of ignorance The man known as Ota Benga and people of his homelands were treated badly not out of pure ignorance, no they were treated abominably out of willful arrogance and crass stupidity to further their own material gains In this case it was men of faith that said Ota Benga was a human being, not a subspecies between ape and man They recognised the pain and suf...Such a heartbreaking story.Recommended on the cover by the great James McBride whom I adore, the story behind Ota Benga s purposeful abduction from the Congo to be exhibited in the St Louis world fair and later in the Bronx zoo as a real life African is thoroughly disturbing The story of Ota Benga presents a...Though there is a bit too much meandering in the last third of the narrative, this is a profoundly heartbreaking true story of racism and human exploitation chillingly sanctioned by institutions of learning and public enlightenment.I won this book off of First Reads and was really excited to read it, because I had only just known Ota Benga s name and not the details of his life Unfortunately, this book missed the mark While Benga was the central point of story, it did not go in depth about him personally, but instead events and people who were connected to him Half of the book was about Phillip Verner, the man who captured and forced Benga to come to the states as an act for the amusement of the American people Further I won this book off of First Reads and was really excited to read it, because I had only just known Ota Benga s name and not the details of his life Unfortunately, this book missed the mark While Benga was the central point of story, it did not go in depth about him personally, but instead events and people who were connected to him Half of the book w...

Spectacle
  • English
  • 18 September 2018
  • Hardcover
  • 336 pages
  • 006220100X
  • Pamela Newkirk
  • Spectacle