Pygmy Conference: In 1906, a Congolese Pygmy named Ota Benga was put on display at the Bronx Zoo. While such an exhibition seems inconceivable today, the Pygmies of central Africa are still being marginalized and exploited.

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As recently as July 2007, Pygmies in the Republic of the Congo were being housed in a tent at a zoo and forced to scrounge for firewood to cook their food as tourists watched.

Pygmy Ota Benga in 1904.

On Saturday, Oct. 27, 2007 Sweet Briar College will host the final day of a three-day, international conference on the continuing plight of the Congolese Pygmies, “Lynchburg, Ota Benga and the Empowerment of the Pygmies.”

The sessions will begin at 10 a.m. in Memorial Chapel. On Oct. 25 and 26, 2007 panel discussions will be held Lynchburg College and Virginia University of Lynchburg, respectively.

The conference is free and open to the public. Due to limited space, however, pre-registration is required by Oct. 15. At LC and SBC, registration is limited to the first 200 applicants; VUL can accommodate 700 people.

Participants may register for any or all sessions.

In lieu of a registration fee, donations are being accepted for the Pygmy Travel Fund. Meals are not included. To register online, visit https://www.lynchburg.edu/x9016.xml .

“Sweet Briar College is proud to be a partner in this conference with our sister institutions … as well as many members of the greater Lynchburg community who have contributed their time and money to make this event possible,” Jonathan Green, dean of the College, said.

According to Green, the idea for the conference originated more than two years ago with W.S. Dibinga, also known as Dibinga wa Said. A Pygmy himself, Dibinga has a Ph.D. in economics from the Sorbonne and a Th.D. from Harvard. He has lived in the States for many years.

“Dr. W.S. Dibinga came to visit me over two years ago to discuss his vision of an international conference dedicated to raising awareness about the plight of the modern-day Pygmies,” Green said.

“Central Virginia was appealing to him because it was the final resting place of Ota Benga – the most celebrated Congolese Pygmy in American history and a symbol of civil injustice.”

Central Virginia may seem an unlikely place to talk about Pygmies, but the tragic life of Ota Benga came to an end in Lynchburg. The conference will explore not only Ota Benga’s life, but western intervention and occupation of Africa in the late 19th-century and the Pygmy role in central African history.

Ota Benga was born in about 1883 in what is now known as the Democratic Republic of the Congo. At the time, the territory was under control of the Belgians, who plundered the land for ivory and rubber.

They forced the skilled Pygmy hunters, including Ota Benga, to gather ivory. Upon his return from one such hunt, Ota Benga found that his village had been destroyed and his wife and two children murdered.

He was sold in the slave market, where he was purchased by the Rev. Samuel Phillips Verner, a missionary who had spent a year in the Congo. Verner had agreed to buy Pygmies for the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair, and returned with Ota Benga and four other Pygmies. After being exhibited at the fair, Ota Benga visited New York before returning home to the Congo.

Ota Benga helped Verner on later expeditions to collect African artifacts. After Ota Benga’s second wife was bitten by a poisonous snake and died, he decided to return to New York with Verner.

In New York, Ota Benga stayed at the Museum of Natural History, where he roamed the building and helped the guards. He tried to get a permanent position there, but the deal fell through and he found himself at the Bronx Zoo. He was exhibited in a cage with primates, drawing crowds and attention from The New York Times. It was this news that created a link to Lynchburg.

The Rev. William Henry Moses, a graduate of Virginia Baptist Seminary – now Virginia University of Lynchburg – was disgusted with the zoo’s display of Ota Benga. Moses and other African-American ministers obtained his release.

Eventually, Ota Benga asked if he could move to Lynchburg, which offered a warmer climate and a haven at the seminary, a leading educational institution for black Americans at that time.

In January 1910, he went to Lynchburg where he lived with the family of Gregory Willis Hayes, president of the seminary. The diminutive Ota Benga took classes, but also taught youngsters to hunt, fish and gather wild honey. One of those boys was Chauncey Spencer, son of Harlem Renaissance poet Anne Spencer.

Ota Benga tried to adapt to western ways and even had his pointed teeth capped. He became known as "Otto Bingo" and worked at a Lynchburg tobacco factory, but longed to return to Africa.

Unable to save enough for the fare, on March 20, 1916, he built a fire, broke the caps off his teeth, danced around the fire chanting traditional songs, and then shot himself in the heart. He is buried in an unmarked grave in Lynchburg.

Interest in Ota Benga resurfaced in 2004 when Dibinga came to Lynchburg in search of Ota Benga’s grave. He also obtained a paper on the famous Pygmy written by Lynchburg College student Katie Hadley Gordon.

In the fall of 2005, Dibinga gave a presentation on Ota Benga for LC’s senior symposium. Gordon continued her research and subsequently contacted Samuel Verner’s grandson, Phillips Verner Bradford.

She developed a relationship with Bradford who shared unpublished information about the relationship between his grandfather and Ota Benga. With this conference, those efforts have come full circle.

Special guests and speakers at the conference will include: