Freak shows are public displays of human “freaks of nature”—human being with rare or unique biological characteristics. Dating back centuries, freak shows became especially popular in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries when promoters, hucksters, and quacks turned them into an extremely profitable commercial enterprise in America and Europe. One of those who excelled at presenting freak shows was showman P.T. Barnum. After the emergence of Darwin’s theory of evolution, freak shows would often feature people who purported to be “missing links” between modern humans and their ape-like ancestors. Freak shows demeaned people who were different and dehumanized them for profit.
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.
“Krao the Missing Link” was a young woman from Southeast Asia who was publicly displayed in the late nineteenth century. Promoted as “living proof of Darwin’s Theory of the Descent of Man,” Krao was described as “a perfect specimen of the step between man and monkey.” Actually, she suffered from hyper-trichosis, a rare genetic condition that produces excessive hair.
“Congo—the Ape Man” was an African American man publicly exhibited as a “missing link” in the early 1900s. He was usually exhibited in a cage next to a chimpanzee.
Percilla Bejano was a young woman with hyper-trichosis, which causes the production of excessive hair. She was exhibited during her freak show career as the “Monkey Girl,” half human, half monkey.
Richard Weikart, PhD, is a Professor of History at California State University, Stanislaus. He is author of multiple books examining the historical impact of Social Darwinism and other ideologies, including From Darwin to Hitler: Evolutionary Ethics, Eugenics, and Racism in Germany, Hitler’s Ethic: The Nazi Pursuit of Evolutionary Progress, and The Death of Humanity. Weikart holds a PhD in modern European history from the University of Iowa. British historian Sir Richard Evans of Cambridge University called Weikart’s book From Darwin to Hitler an “outstanding book [that] shows in sober and convincing detail how… thinkers in Germany had developed an amoral attitude to human society by the time of the First World War, in which the supposed good of the race was applied as the sole criterion of public policy and ‘racial hygiene’.”
John G. West, PhD, is Vice President and Senior Fellow of the Seattle-based Discovery Institute. Formerly the Chair of the Department of Political Science and Geography at Seattle Pacific University, West is an author and documentary filmmaker who has written or edited 12 books, including Darwin Day in America: How Our Politics and Culture Have Been Dehumanized in the Name of Science, The Magician’s Twin: C. S. Lewis on Science, Scientism, and Society, and Walt Disney and Live Action: The Disney Studio’s Live-Action Features of the 1950s and 60s. His documentary films include Fire-Maker, Revolutionary, The War on Humans, and the award-winning Biology of the Second Reich. He holds a PhD in Government from Claremont Graduate University. His articles have appeared in USA Today, The Washington Post, FoxNews.com, and other outlets.
Jay W. Richards, PhD, is the Executive Editor of The Stream. He is an Assistant Research Professor in the School of Business and Economics at The Catholic University of America and a Senior Fellow at the Discovery Institute. He is author of many books including the New York Times bestsellers Infiltrated (2013), and Indivisible (2012), co-authored with James Robison. He is also the author of Money, Greed, and God, winner of a 2010 Templeton Enterprise Award; and co-author of The Privileged Planet with astronomer Guillermo Gonzalez. His most recent book, co-authored with Jonathan Witt, is The Hobbit Party: The Vision of Freedom that J.R.R. Tolkien Got and the West Forgot. He has a PhD with honors in philosophy and theology from Princeton Theological Seminary.