Photo credit: Michael Lionstar
A girlfriend gave me a book about Ota Benga. It was a used book with marks made with a pink highlighter. Then, a few weeks later, she gave me another copy of the same book. Did she not remember her earlier gift? For my part, I not only kept tabs on every gift I gave her, but, and I’m sure this wasn’t just because I was poor, I also remembered the price. I’m not proud of this; I’m just stating the facts.
All this is from more than two decades ago. Not Ota Benga, though. He was earlier. In the summer of 1904, Ota Benga was bought in the Congo from slave traders for a pound of salt and a bolt of cloth. The man who purchased him was an American entrepreneur and explorer named Samuel Phillips Verner. Verner was under contract to bring pygmies for display at the St. Louis World Fair. Later, Verner was awarded a gold medal for his services to the young discipline of anthropology...