At 21, Ota Benga was brought to the United States by African explorer Samuel Verner. Verner displayed Ota Benga alongside six other pygmies of the Congolese Mbuti tribe at the St. Louis World Fair in 1904. Verner then escorted them back to the Congo, but Benga returned to America for the second time and ended up on display at the Bronx Zoo. He then studied at a colored orphan asylum and attended a Baptist Seminary. But only the forest held his attention and he ultimately took his own life.
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