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They were two albino brothers; In 1899 they were kidnapped as boys in Truevine, Virginia by bounty hunters and were forced into the circus, labeled as “freak show” performers. Their owners showcased the brothers in circuses where they were exploited for profit in so-called freak shows. The Muse Brothers became famous across the United States as “Eko and Iko”, the “White Ecuadorian Cannibals”, the “Sheep Headed Men”, the “Sheep Headed Cannibals”, the “Ministers from Dahomey” and “Ambassadors from Mars”. George and Willie were forced to grow their hair into massive “dreadlocks“ which together with their white skin and bluish eyes were exhibited as rarities.

They were also billed as “Darwin’s Missing Links” and “Nature’s Greatest Mistakes”. The boys were not permitted to go to school, neither were they paid for their work. They were literally kept in slavery. One of their owners had found that George and Willie harboured the ability to play any song on almost any instrument, from the xylophone to the saxophone and mandolin, and that made them even more famous and more valuable ‘assets’ to owners of travelling circuses. However, after all this time, their illiterate mother had not ceased looking for her boys. In the fall of 1927, the brothers were on a tour with Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus to Roanoke, little did the boys know they were coming home from which they had disappeared nearly three decades back.

It came to their mother’s attention that the The Greatest Show On Earth was in town and she was determined to find them. It was a tough decision to confront the Ringling Brothers who were powerful multimillionaires who also had the attention of the heavyweight politicians and law enforcement agencies. Their mother tracked them down and eventually found the boys working for the Ringling Brothers circus and surprised them while they were on stage and their family reunited, 28 years later since they had gone missing in the very same town. The poor and powerless black woman stood up to police and big shot circus owners and successfully took her sons home.

During the 1940s it was rare for a black person to have control over large amounts of land.In 1944, a group of white men brutally lynched Rev. Isaac Simmons, a Black minister & farmer, so they could steal his land in Amite County, Mississippi which was over 270 acres.In the 1940s, Simmons controlled approxmately 270 acres or more of debt-free land, some of which had been owned by the family since 1887. He and other relatives farmed the property and lived on it in relative peace.In 1941, rumors about oil spread across Southwest Mississippi, and a few white men, thinking there might be oil on it, began to make claims on the Simmons land.

Concerned that his family might lose its property, Simmons contacted an attorney. A few weeks after he hired the lawyer, two men approached Simmons and ordered him to stop cutting timber on his property.The men also wanted the medicinal formula that Simmons, who served as the local medicine man, had created to treat a livestock disease. Simmons refused to comply with the men.A few weeks later a group of six men dragged Simmons from his home, beat him and then shot him to death.

According to Simmons’ son, who was abducted and beaten at the same time but survived, the men called Simmons a “smart N—r” because he had consulted a lawyer.They drove both Simmons men further onto the property and ordered Rev. Simmons out of the car, then killed him brutally–shooting him 3 times and cutting out his tongue. The men let Eldridge Simmons go,but told him he and his relatives had ten days to abandon the family property.

Humans have been taken from their native lands and taken to be exhibited in human zoos for more than a century. Alongside animals, they were displayed before fellow humans. This little known and profoundly troubling aspect of colonial history played a crucial part.

Between 1810 and 1940, in Europe, America and Japan, almost 35 thousand people were exhibited in world fairs, colonial exhibits, zoos, freak shows, circuses and relocated ethnic villages.

These activities were attended by some 1,5 billion visitors. This documentary traces how racism in these so-called ‘human zoos’ was constructed and disseminated using previously unpublished archive material.

Children, women and men were exhibited as exotic animals, and ordered in a “race” hierarchy. In a way that served to justify colonialism, they were cast as “other” and described as “savage.”

It is a little known and deeply disturbing part of colonial history. Only a handful of the thousands of men and women recruited from the four corners of the Earth ever managed to tell their experiences.

It is a part of colonial history that is little known and extremely disturbing. Just a handful of the thousands of men and women recruited from the four corners of the world have ever been able to make their experiences public.

This piece of human history becomes tangible through the biographies of six victims: Petite Capeline, an aboriginal of Tierra del Fuego; Tambo, an Australian aborigine; Moliko Kalina from French Guiana; Ota Benga, a pygmy from Congo; Jean Thiam, a Wolof from Senegal; and Marius Kaloie from New Caledonia.

Their lives are represented by the work of historians and the help of their descendants in the historic context of the rise of the great colonial powers.

Analysis and commentary by experienced people also examine the origins of racism in the change from supposedly scientific racism to everyday racism.

Queen Pokou was the queen and founder of the Baoule tribe in West Africa, now Ivory Coast. She is sometimes called Awura, Aura, or Abla Pokou. As the tribe spread westward, she ruled over a branch of the strong Ashanti Empire. The Baoule people, a sub-group of the Akan people, are one of the largest ethnic groups in modern Ivory Coast today.

Queen Pokou was born the princess of Kumasi, Ghana, the daughter of Dakon’s sister Nyakou Kosiamoa, the ill-fated successor of Opoku Ware I, and the niece of Osei Kofi Tutu I, a formidable king who co-founded the Ashanti Kingdom.

Queen Pokou was the head of a breakaway community that she declined to join from the main Ashti Confederacy. Differences between the factions led to war. In a long, hard journey, Pokou led her group westward to the Komoe River. She had to give her only son to cross the river for her people, according to the legend.

Queen Pokou was the head of a breakaway community that she declined to join from the main Ashti Confederacy. Differences between the factions led to war. In a long, hard journey, Pokou led her group westward to the Komoe River. She had to give her only son to cross the river for her people, according to the legend.The people of Baoule live between the rivers Komoé and Bandama. It represents 15% of the population of the country, with many smaller tribes assimilated over the centuries.

The Baoule people’s founding legend holds that when Pokou and her people arrived on the Komoé River, it was uncrossable. Pokou asked her priest for a guide, and he told her it was needed to sacrifice a noble child to cross a river. Then, Pokou sacrificed her son, throwing the baby into the river.

According to legend, hippopotami emerged after the sacrifice and formed a bridge that Pokou and her people used to cross over to the opposite side of the Komoé. She called out “Ba ouli” once on the other side, or the child is dead.” That is why her descendants are known as the Baoule today.

Ayuba Suleiman Diallo is best remembered for his memoirs as a Muslim, who in colonial America had to suffer the Atlantic slave trade and enslavement. In 1734 Thomas Bluett published his personal history with several Accounts of the Life of Job. Till now, they serve in eighteenth-century America as one of the few primary sources of Atlantic slave trade and slave-life. Diallo was born in 1701 in in the Futa Toro present-day Senegal, West Africa. Born into an influential religious family, Diallo grew up in comfort and luxury, he became a young merchant by 1729.

In that same year 1729, Mandinka slave traders kidnapped him and his translator, Loumein. He was then sold to the Royal African Company, the region’s largest English slave enterprise. The Royal African Company then sold him to the sea captain who later took him to Annapolis, Maryland. Diallo began his new life in the British colonies as an enslaved person.Diallo was immediately put to work in the tobacco fields, but because he was not used to hard manual labour, he was soon assigned to herding cattle.

Since slave-owners had punished slaves who kept practicing their African beliefs and Islam in particular, Diallo kept his religion for some time secret until a child found him praying to Allah.Diallo was publicly embarrassed as he wanted to follow his religion, he tried to escape from his owner in 1731 but was soon arrested and imprisoned in the in Kent County, Maryland courthouse.

While in jail, he met with Rev. Thomas Bluett, a lawyer, judge, and missionary who was fascinatingly impressed by the skill of reading and writing in Arabic by Diallo. He was also fluent in the Wolo flanguage, which he interpreted for Bluett. Although Diallo was returned to his owner, Bluett did help Diallo convince the owner of his noble origins. Diallo also wrote an Arabic letter in Futa Toro for his father. However it reached the Royal African Company director, James Oglethorpe. Oglethorpe bought Diallo, set him free and sent him to London to start a new life. There Diallo interacted with the professional elite members of London.

He also had to deal with slave catchers among certain connections who wanted to trap him and sell him to other slave traders. He approached Bluett, who was in London at the time.With a view to his safety, Bluett raised funds from the London elite including the Duke and Duchess of Montague, members of the Royal Family to permit Diallo back to Futa Toro. Diallo agreed in response to allow Bluett to write his autobiographies, which were only completed after Diallo arrived in West Africa.

Diallo returned to discover in 1734 that his father had passed, and his wives remarried. Nevertheless, Diallo was able to see his children and live in Futa Toro. Ironically, he went to work for the Royal African Company as an interpreter and slave trader, until his death at the age of 72 in 1773.However, the memories of Diallo that Bluett published are among the earliest of the slave narratives that became popular with British and American abolitionists in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. His story is also still regarded as a key element of understanding slave trade in the Atlantic.