Editing Human zoo (section)

=== First organized backlash ===
According to ''The New York Times'', although "few expressed audible objection to the sight of a human being in a cage with monkeys as companions", controversy erupted as black clergymen in the city took great offense. "Our race, we think, is depressed enough, without exhibiting one of us with the apes", said the Reverend James H. Gordon, superintendent of the Howard Colored Orphan Asylum in Brooklyn. "We think we are worthy of being considered human beings, with souls."<ref name="nytimes">{{cite news|last=Keller|first=Mitch|date=6 August 2006|title=The Scandal at the Zoo|work=The New York Times|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/06/nyregion/thecity/06zoo.html?ex=1155009600&en=c2cc9b84edc068cd&ei=5087%0A|access-date=2008-07-07|archive-date=28 November 2018|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181128113712/https://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/06/nyregion/thecity/06zoo.html?ex=1155009600&en=c2cc9b84edc068cd&ei=5087%0A|url-status=live}}</ref>

[[Mayor of New York City|New York City Mayor]] [[George B. McClellan Jr.]] refused to meet with the clergymen, drawing the praise of Hornaday, who wrote to him: "When the history of the Zoological Park is written, this incident will form its most amusing passage."<ref name="nytimes" />

As the controversy continued, Hornaday remained unapologetic, insisting that his only intention was to put on an ethnological exhibition. In another letter, he said that he and Grant—who ten years later would publish the racist tract ''[[The Passing of the Great Race]]''—considered it "imperative that the society should not even seem to be dictated to" by the black clergymen.<ref name="nytimes" />
[[File:Exposition coloniale au Parc Tennoji (Osaka).png|alt=|thumb|Grand Colonial Exhibition (Meiji Memorial Takushoku Expo) at Tennoji Park, Osaka in 1913 ({{Lang|ja|明治記念拓殖博覧会（台湾土人ノ住宅及其風俗）}})]]
1903 saw one of the first widespread protests against human zoos, at the "Human Pavilion" of an [[Fifth National Industrial Exhibition|exposition in Osaka]], Japan. The exhibition of Koreans and Okinawans in "primitive" housing incurred protests from the governments of Korea and Okinawa, and a Formosan woman wearing Chinese dress angered a group of Chinese students studying abroad in Tokyo. An [[Ainu people|Ainu]] schoolteacher was made to exhibit himself in the zoo to raise money for his schoolhouse, as the Japanese government refused to pay. The fact that the schoolteacher made eloquent speeches and fundraised for his school while wearing traditional dress confused the spectators. An anonymous front-page column in a Japanese magazine condemned these examples and the "Human Pavilion" in total, calling it inhumane to exhibit people as spectacles.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Ziomek |first1=Kirsten L. |title=The 1903 Human Pavilion: Colonial Realities and Subaltern Subjectivities in Twentieth-Century Japan |journal=The Journal of Asian Studies |year=2014 |volume=73 |issue=2 |pages=493–516 |doi=10.1017/S0021911814000011 |jstor=43553298 |s2cid=162521059 |issn=0021-9118}}</ref>