Clergy

Many members of New York’s clergy were horrified by the public display of Ota Benga in the Monkey House. First to speak out was the Rev. Robert Stuart MacArthur, pastor of the city’s Calvary Baptist Church, one of the largest Baptist congregations in America. One of the most articulate and determined critics of the zoo display was African-American minster James H. Gordon, Superintendent of the Howard Colored Orphan Asylum in Brooklyn.

For more information:

Spectacle: The Astonishing Life of Ota Benga by Pamela Newkirk (Book)

Original newspaper coverage:

“Negro Clergy Protest,” New–York Daily Tribune, September 11, 1906

“Man and Monkey Show Disapproved by Clergy,” The New York Times, September 10, 1906

“Negro Ministers Act to Free the Pygmy,” The New York Times, September 11, 1906

“The Mayor Won’t Help to Free Caged Pygmy,” The New York Times, September 12, 1906

“Still Stirred about Benga,” The New York Times, September 23, 1906