Discover Top Posts Tagged with #human zoos

Popular Recent

"[William T.] Hornaday's views about the natives of sub-Saharan Africa mirrored [Samuel Phillips] Verner's own, conscripting Darwin in the service of racism: he told the New York Times that "there exists a close analogy of the African savage to the apes." Scientific American agreed: "the Congo pygmies [are] small, ape-like, elfish creatures, furtive and mischievous, they closely parallel the brownies and goblins of our fairy tales. They live in the dense tangled forests in absolute savagery... while they exhibit many ape-like features in their bodies."

But Hornaday espoused a more progressive vision as a scientific artist, and we have him to thank for the modern American zoo. As Chief Taxidermist of the National Museum (the Smithsonian), a position he held until 1890, he had inherited a static mausoleum of tatty taxidermy enshrined on plaster pedestals with only laconic placards to suggest what the animal have been like in life.

In 1888, Hornaday persuaded the museum to add a wing of living animals and life-like settings, which proved so popular a revolution that it became the National Zoological Gardens. He resigned over differences of vision, but in 1896 he reemerged as the first director of the New York Zoological Gardens (known as the Bronx zoo), the world's largest, luscious, and most varied zoo...

So when [Ota] Benga was locked in the monkey house, before the staring crowd and with keepers always nearby, he was given a bowl and arrow to brandish, his cage was littered with bones, and his two cage mates were Dinah, a gorilla, and an orangutan named Dohung. The placard on Benga's enclosure read, "the African Pygmy, 'Ota Benga'. Height 4 feet 11 inches. Weight 103 pounds. Brought from the Kasai River, Congo Free State, South Central Africa by Dr. Samuel P Verner. Exhibited each afternoon during September."

...Black New Yorkers were incensed, and representatives of the clergy, led by the Reverend Dr.MacArthur, pressed mayor George B. McClellan to withdraw the city's support from the exhibit. Another minister, a Reverend Gordon, told the New York Times "Our race... is depressed enough without exhibiting one of us with the apes. We think we are worthy of being considered human beings, with souls.""

Chapter 3- Medical Apartheid, Harriet A. Washington

#creatingblackcharacters #political nonfiction #antiblackness #racism #zoos #human zoos #medical apartheid #cbc book club 📚

A Filipino baby girl sitting on a wooden bench as part of a human zoo exhibit in Coney Island, New York, 1906

#photography #amerikkka #black and white #1906 #western civilization #human zoos #history #1900s #coney island

The horrifying Human Zoos

Shocking photos reveal how zoos around the world kept 'primitive natives' in enclosures as Westerners gawped and jeered at them just 60 years ago. These shocking pictures show how so-called 'human zoos' around the world kept 'primitive natives' in enclosures so Westerners could gawp and jeer at them.The horrifying images, some of which were taken as recently as 1958, show how black and Asian people were cruelly treated as exhibits that attracted millions of tourists. Inhumane shows held across the Western world were designed to emphasise the cultural difference between Europeans and people who were deemed primitive.

Some of the people in the exhibits, in the late 19th and early to mid 20th century, were treated like animals and many died. They included Ota Benga, a Congolese man exhibited in New York's Bronx Zoo in 1906, who was shockingly described as a 'missing link' of evolution. The dreadful exhibit sparked protest and outrage and Ota was eventually released. But six years later he tragically took his own life after being unable to assimilate into American life.

Europe also “displayed” indigenous people with similar human zoos in France, Norway, Belgium, Germany, Spain and Italy. Norway had a human zoo for five months in 1914, which included 80 people from Senegal living in a 'Congo Village.'

More than half the Norwegian population paid a visit to the exhibition in Oslo as the Africans wore traditional clothing and went about their daily routing of cooking, eating and making handicrafts. And over 18 million people came to visit the World Fair in 1889, held in Paris.

The shameful industry also affected indigenous Australians in the late 19th and early 20th century. Indigenous Australians were kept alongside animals and paraded around the world in what was dubbed 'The Human Zoo'.

#human zoos #crime #true crime #horror #sixpenceee

there is a news segment about two teenagers advocating for more historical education about the local zoo having been a human zoo as in like they literally just want maybe a couple of signs and a statement

and there are some 130 comments going "uhmmm actually sweatie human zoos were normal back then so they couldn't have been bad :) and also we can't change the past what do you want us to do? turn back time?"

#culture #history #hagenbeck #human zoos #racism #some people claim that obviously everyone knows about it already and I didn't #I know human zoos were a thing but I didn't know Hagenbeck was a big name in it #as in one of the main names you find when researching it #the Zoo claims the people were treated as guests but they died of smallpox and were caught by animal catchers #I hate Germany sometimes

#human zoos #black lives matter

Como resultado de la Conquista del Desierto, 14000 indígenas mapuche, aonikenk, ranqueles, pampas y selk'nam (entre otros) fueron asesinados, aprisionados y trasladados a museos y zoológicos humanos. Esta niña selk'nam nació en la Exposición Nacional de 1898 en Buenos Aires. Argentina.

In English: as result of the Conquest of the Desert, 14000 indigenous Mapuche, Aonikenk, Ranquel, Pampa and Selk'nam (among others) were murdered, imprisoned and taken to museums and human zoos. This Selk'nam girl was born in the Exposición Nacional of 1898. Buenos Aires. Argentina.