Pamela Newkirk, professor of journalism at New York University, will present a lecture on Ota Benga and a discussion on media coverage of the Black Lives Matter movement.
ABOUT: Ota Benga, a pygmy from the Congo, was first brought to the United States to be exhibited as an example from a primitive tribe at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition in Saint-Louis in 1904. He was exhibited in the monkey cage at the Bronx Zoological Park in 1906. After his release, he moved to Virginia where he eventually took his own life 10 years later. During the 12 years Benga was in the U.S. alone, over 800 black Americans were lynched. Lynching and the public humiliation suffered by Benga provide critical genealogies for the understanding of the constant assault, degradation, and ultimate erasure of black bodies that has sparked the Black Lives Matter movement.
TIMES, DATES, PLACE: “Why Ota Benga Matters: Race, Mythology and the Persistence of Prejudice” lecture, 5 pm, Thursday Feb. 4.
“Media Coverage of The Black Lives Matter Movement” discussion, 10:30 am, Friday Feb. 5.
Both events take place in the Hawkins-Carlson Room in Rush Rhees Library on the River Campus. The events are free and open to the public.
WHO: Pamela Newkirk is an award-winning journalist whose articles have been published in numerous publications including The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Nation. Her book Spectacle: The Astonishing Life of Ota Benga was published in 2015. She is editor of Letters from Black America, and A Love No Less: More Than Two Centuries of African American Love Letters. She is also the author of Within the Veil: Black Journalists, White Media, which won the National Press Club Award for Media Criticism. Prior to joining NYU’s faculty, where she is director of undergraduate studies, she was part of a Pulitzer Prize-winning team at New York Newsday. Newkirk holds an undergraduate journalism degree from New York University. She earned her master’s and doctorate degree from Columbia University.
EVENT SPONSOR: Frederick Douglass Institute for African and African-American Studies.
FOR MORE INFORMATION: Contact FDI Program Manager Ghislaine Radegonde-Eison at FDI@rochester.edu or (585) 276-5744.
