What Is It?

Three months after Charles Darwin published his book On the Origin of Species, American showman P.T. Barnum unveiled a new attraction at his popular museum in New York City. It featured what was described as “THE WHAT IS IT? or MAN-MONKEY.” Visitors were told that the creature had been captured by hunters in Africa who discovered “a race of beings roving among the trees and branches” like apes and monkeys. Museum staff declared that the creature had been pronounced by scientists as a “connecting link” between African blacks and lower animals. In reality, Barnum’s so-called “MAN-MONKEY” was an African-American man named William Henry Johnson. Thanks to Barnum, Johnson spent much of his life on public display as an evolutionary “missing link,” sometimes in a cage.