CNN)—During September of 1906, nearly a quarter of a million New Yorkers flocked to the Bronx Zoo to behold a young African named Ota Benga -- a so-called "pygmy" -- exhibited in an iron monkey house cage.
Protests by a coterie of ministers and a small cadre of elite whites met a wall of resistance as the exhibition of the 103-pound, 4-foot-11 Ota Benga was quietly sanctioned by zoological society officials, the mayor, scientists, the public and many of the nation's newspapers, including The New York Times.
"Bushman Shares a Cage with Bronx Park Apes," trumpeted a New York Times headline on September 9.
"The human being happened to be a Bushman, one of a race that scientists do not rate high in the human scale," said the article. "But to the average nonscientific person in the crowd of sightseers there was something about the display that was unpleasant."
Still, up to 500 people at a time flocked to the monkey house to see the boyish Benga, who often sat on a stool in stupefied silence. The spectacle inspired sensationalized headlines from New York to California and across Europe, and zoo attendance during September doubled over the previous year. On one day alone, 40,000 people visited the zoo, according to figures it released.
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http://www.cnn.com/2015/06/03/opinions/newkirk-bronx-zoo-man-cage/index.html
