Ota Benga under My Mother's Roof

Carrie Allen Mccray

Description

In Ota Benga under My Mother's Roof, Carrie Allen McCray (1913–2008) uses poignant and personal verse to trace the ill-fated life of the Congolese pygmy who was famously exhibited in the Bronx Zoo in 1906 before being taken in by the McCray family of Lynchburg, Virginia. Rooted in the rich historical and autobiographic context of her own experiences with Benga, McCray offers compelling, dexterous poems that place Benga's story within the racial milieu of the early twentieth century as the burgeoning science of social anthropology worked to classify humans based on race and culture. The theme of this book is a study of humanity, of people of all kinds, in which Benga's vitality becomes the measure against which everyone is measured. With poems that revel in African American signifying, spirituality, and traditional storytelling, McCray's collection establishes a sincere legacy for Ota Benga as she shares her friend's harrowing tale with new generations.

Sujets

• América
• Dear Friend
• Toi Derricotte
• My Father
• Carrie Allen McCray
• The Forest People
• Allen Say
• Cornelius Eady
• Sonia Sanchez
• Kwame Dawes
• Eisa (dance)
• In the Woods
• John Chilembwe
• Sharon Olds
• Galway Kinnell
• African American
• Poetry
• Ota Benga
• Colin Turnbull
• American
• James Weldon Johnson
• In the Woods...
• W. E. B. Du Bois
• Black

Informations

• Publié par: University of South Carolina Press
• Date de parution: 27 août 2012
• Nombre de lectures: 1
• EAN13: 9781611171969
• Langue: English

Extrait

Ota Benga under My Mother s Roof
T HE P ALMETTO P OETRY S ERIES K WAME D AWES, SERIES EDITOR
Ota Benga under My Mother s Roof
Carrie Allen McCray, edited by Kevin Simmonds
A Book of Exquisite Disasters
Charlene Monahan Spearen
Seeking: Poetry and Prose Inspired by the Art of Jonathan Green
Edited by Kwame Dawes and Marjory Wentworth
Ota Benga under My Mother s Roof
POEMS
Carrie Allen McCray
Edited with an Introduction by Kevin Simmonds

The University of South Carolina Press
Published in Cooperation with the South Carolina Poetry Initiative, University of South Carolina
2012 University of South Carolina
Paperback original edition published
by the University of South Carolina Press, 2012
Ebook edition published in Columbia, South Carolina,
by the University of South Carolina Press, 2012
www.sc.edu/uscpress
21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
The Library of Congress has cataloged the paperback edition as follows:
McCray, Carrie Allen, 1913-
Ota Benga under my mother s roof: poems / Carrie Allen McCray; edited with an introduction by Kevin Simmonds.
p. cm.-(The Palmetto poetry series)
ISBN 978-1-61117-085-6 (pbk.: alk. paper)
I. Simmonds, Kevin. II. Title.
PS3613.C38633O83 2012
811 .6-dc23
2011052333
ISBN 978-1-61117-196-9 (ebook)
I dedicate Ota Benga under My Mother s Roof to Ota Benga and the early Congo Forest People. Before the intrusion into their Forest, their culture, like those of some other lesser developed societies, could serve as a model for humanity. The Congo Forest People were pacifists, egalitarians, and environmentalists. Our civilized nations are still trying to attain some of the values the Congo Forest People held for thousands of years.
I also dedicate Ota Benga under My Mother s Roof to Phillipe Wamba, son of Ernest Wamba dia Wamba, chairman of the Rally for Congolese Democracy. Although not of Ota s culture, Phillipe was quite knowledgeable about it and read the manuscript with an eye for any cultural flaws. His sudden death in an automobile accident in Africa was a tragic loss to humanity. He was one of the finest young men I have ever known.
Contents
Series Editor s Preface
Preface
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Night
Life in the Congo Forest
Fathers
Storm Warning
Dichotomy
Where Are the Hands?
The Girls in Ota s Forest
Ota s Courtship and Marriage
Kafi
Trail of the Mazungus
The Birth of Anthropology
Blues Man Answers
Hunters of Men
Strings I
Ota Crossing Big Watah
New Orleans
1904 St. Louis World s Fair
The Anthropology Exhibit
Back Home
Measuring
The Real Measure of Man
On the Way to New York
Strings II
South Winds: The Pennsylvania Train
The Jim Crow Car
Virginia: The House on Durmid Hill
The Children s Virginia
Ota s Virginia
Loss
Return to the Orphanage
Return to the Southland
Like a Wind
Ota in Woods with Boys
Forest Man
Into the Woods Alone
Fire Dance
In the Dark of Night
Lamentations
Evening Song
Series Editor s Preface
This long-awaited book comes as a celebration of the gift that Carrie Allen McCray was to so many people. Ota Benga under My Mother s Roof is a project that occupied fully the last years of her long life, and on her passing, admirers and friends rallied together to ensure that this book could be shared with so many people. This book s existence owes much to Carolyn Micklem, a dear friend of Carrie Allen McCray, who rallied to raise the funds needed to put together this work. Ota Benga under My Mother s Roof is a joint publication of the South Carolina Poetry Initiative and the University of South Carolina Press.
K WAME D AWES
Director, the South Carolina Poetry Initiative

Ota Benga; photograph courtesy of the Library of Congress
Preface
This narrative poem is a tribute to Ota Benga, a strong yet gentle man from the deep Congo Forest. Ota was brought over here to America, first in 1904, and again in 1906 by Samuel Phillips Verner, a Presbyterian minister who served as a missionary to the Congo. This was during the frenzied time of anthropologists trying to prove the darker races a lower form of humanity.
In 1904 members of these darker races were brought to America and exhibited in the St. Louis World s Fair Anthropology Unit: Eskimo natives from Alaska, the Ainu from Japan, natives from the Philippines, Indian tribes from America, Zulus, Balubas and Pygmies from Africa.
In 1906 Verner fell on hard times and left Ota at the Museum of Natural History with its unscrupulous director, Henry Bumpus, who exhibited him. Ota reacted strongly against this so Bumpus contacted Verner, whom Ota called Fwela (leader), to come and get him. Verner then placed Ota with William Hornaday, director of the Bronx Zoo, who arranged for Ota to live in a cage with an ape.
The story of the exhibition was in all the newspapers, and African American ministers and others across the nation protested. My mother s first husband, Professor Gregory Willis Hayes, was one of those protesters. The president of Virginia Seminary in Lynchburg, Virginia, he was also chairman of the National Black Baptist Education Committee. Professor Hayes offered Ota his home as a place to live and an opportunity for education in the lower school of the seminary, just across the road from the Hayes home.
Professor Hayes and his wife, Mary, were members of the early Pan-African movement, having been encouraged by John Chilembwe, who earlier attended the seminary. Later Chilembwe led his country, Nyasaland (now Malawi), to freedom from British rule. Professor Hayes was committed to freedom. Born into slavery, he went on to graduate from Oberlin College with honors and was its first African American graduation speaker. The town newspaper compared his speaking ability to that of Frederick Douglass. G. F. Richings, in Evidence of Progress among Colored People, stated, In young men like Professor Hayes, rests the future of the race.
I have a personal interest in the story of Ota Benga since he lived in our home, not in the home of Anne Spencer, my mother s dearest friend and one of the Harlem Renaissance poets. Her son, Chauncey, misled the authors of Ota Benga: The Pygmy in the Zoo- this despite the fact that my brother, Hunter Hayes, had given them the truth. Chauncey s story was unfortunate because it went around the world as truth; and my mother was not even mentioned in Bradford and Blum s book.
Ota had lived in the Hayes home only six months when Professor Hayes, Ota s sponsor, became seriously ill and died. Ota had to be returned to the orphanage in Brooklyn. However, in 1910, he asked to return to Lynchburg, and Mary Hayes, now Mary Hayes Allen, and her sons were happy for Ota s return to the home. Mary Hayes had married my father, a lawyer, William Patterson Allen. From that union three girls were born-Rosemary, me, and then Dollie. The house was now bulging with people and activity.
Ota was a teacher to the boys. He taught them to make spears and to hunt and fish as his father had taught him. He also had a profound influence on our mother and Harlem Renaissance poets and writers, such as W. E. B. Du Bois and James Weldon Johnson, who visited Anne Spencer and the Hayes home.