SPECTACLE: The Astonishing Life of Ota Benga

Event Details

PBS Television Broadcast:  Virginia, Nov. 15, 2015/National, Nov. 18, 2015

Award-winning scholar and journalist Pamela Newkirk reveals a little-known and shameful episode in American history, when an African man was displayed as an exhibit in the Museum of Natural History and the Bronx Zoo. SPECTACLE is a shocking story of racial prejudice, science, and tragedy in the early years of the Twentieth century—and also a critical episode for understanding why even in 2015 many Americans still see issues of race in profoundly different ways. Ms. Newkirk is a journalist and a professor of journalism, and a director of undergraduate studies at New York University. She is the author of Within the Veil: Black Journalists, White Media, which won the National Press Club Award for Media Criticism, and the editor of Letters from Black America.  Photo credit: Joe Henson