In 1878 and 1889, the Parisian World's Fair exhibited black people in a human zoo they called a Negro village (village ngre). During the 1889 fair 400 people were displayed in this degrading fashion to attract visitors.
It was so effective that 28 million people visited the fair in 1889 to see the 'main attraction.' The Colonial Exhibitions in Marseilles (1906 and 1922) and in Paris (1907 and 1931) displayed nude or semi-nude humans in cages, and the 1931 exhibition of 'indigenous' people drew 34 million visitors over a period of six months!
In 1906 a Congolese pygmy, Ota Benga, was robbed of his dignity by being put on display at the Bronx Zoo in New York City, alongside apes and other animals. The director of the zoo, William Hornaday, put Ota Benga on display in a cage with the chimpanzees, then with an orangutan named Dohong, and labelled him 'The Missing Link.' This suggested that Africans were closer to apes than Europeans. The city's clergymen mounted a protest, but the public flocked to see Ota, nevertheless.
When New York Mayor, George B. McClellan Jr. Refused to meet with the clergymen, Hornaday wrote a letter to him saying: "When the history of the Zoological Park is written, this incident will form it's most amusing passage."
