human zoos

Human zoos were exhibitions displaying people—typically from colonized regions of Africa, Asia, and the Pacific—as ethnographic curiosities for European and American audiences.

Popular from the mid-19th through early 20th centuries, they presented indigenous peoples in staged "native" settings at world's fairs, circuses, and parks.

The practice reflected and reinforced racist ideologies of the colonial era, treating living people as exotic specimens.

Ota Benga was displayed at the Bronx Zoo in 1906.