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Kassongo related that he was the son of an important man related to the chief of his village of Lusuna, in Batetela (Tetela) territory between the Lomami and Lualaba rivers in the Congo Free State, then the personal possession of King Leopold II of Belgium. Kassongo was considered a nephew to the chief, and was taught all the skills that pertained to his station. His name may have signified "tall and lean"<sup>1.</sup>, and recalled the name of a trading post, Piani Kasongo, founded and operated by ivory and slave trader Afro-Omani Tippu Tip, newly appointed Governor of the Stanley Falls District.  
Kassongo related that he was the son of an important man related to the chief of his village of Lusuna, in Batetela (Tetela) territory between the Lomami and Lualaba rivers in the Congo Free State, then the personal possession of King Leopold II of Belgium. Kassongo was considered a nephew to the chief, and was taught all the skills that pertained to his station. His name may have signified "tall and lean"<sup>1.</sup>, and recalled the name of a trading post, Piani Kasongo, founded and operated by ivory and slave trader Afro-Omani Tippu Tip, newly appointed Governor of the Stanley Falls District.  


During the Congo Arab war, Kassongo, still quite young, traveled as a bearer and servant to the older warriors from his village who fought under Belgian commander Francis Dhanis against Tippu Tip and other traders. He remained with the village warriors as part of a militia aligned with the ''Force Publique''. Belgian officials soon determined that boys spending idle days in the company of militiamen could be detrimental to good order, and rather than return them to their home villages, considered them wards of the state and distributed them to the Christian missions operating in the region.
Kassongo, still quite young, traveled as a bearer and servant to the older warriors from his village who fought under Belgian commander Francis Dhanis against Tippu Tip and other traders during the Congo Arab war. Afterward he remained with the village warriors as part of a militia aligned with Leopold's ''Force Publique'' at Lusambo and Luluaburg. Belgian officials soon determined that boys spending idle days in the company of militiamen could be detrimental to good order, and rather than return them to their home villages, declared them wards of the state and distributed them to the Christian missions operating in the region.


By [[1895]], Captain Commandant Paul-Amédée Le Marinel delivered Kassonga, Kondola and eight older boys to Luebo, the site of a school and church operated by [[William Sheppard]] for the American Presbyterian Congo Mission (APCM).  
By [[1895]], Captain Commandant Paul-Amédée Le Marinel delivered Kassonga, Kondola and eight older boys to Luebo, the site of a school and church operated by [[William Sheppard]] for the American Presbyterian Congo Mission (APCM). The boys were given beds and assigned to work alongside the Luba laborers prevalent in the community to earn their keep. For an hour a day they were taught by [[Lillian Thomas]] and [[Maria Fearing]], graduates of [[Talladega College]], and William's wife, [[Lucy Sheppard|Lucy]], who was from [[Birmingham]]


The APCM had attracted many Black Americans already, but church leadership insisted they be supervised by white managers. In 1895 Samuel Phillips Verner, then 22, and without seminary training, answered an advertisement for a white missionary to accompany the mission. He arrived at his station in Luebo in September 1896 and prepared to work among the Baluba (Luba), a group well-represented in the village as laborers whose territory extended far to the south.
The boys were tutored in the Luba language and taught some arithmetic, along with the memorization of scripture and hymns. They were judged to be quick learners and generally obedient, though sometimes given to fighting and gambling, for which they were punished by whipping. The the school kept the female Luba students sequestered, some of the older boys were given permission to marry girls from neighboring villages.


Verner recounted that in Luebo, the boys were given beds and assigned to work alongside the Luba laborers prevalent in the community to earn their keep. For an hour a day they were taught by [[Lillian Thomas]] and [[Maria Fearing]], graduates of [[Talladega College]], and [[Lucy Sheppard]] of [[Birmingham]], learning the Luba language along with some arithmetic, and memorization of scripture and hymns. The boys gravitated toward Verner, who treated them as personal servants. He assigned them various household tasks and had them assist in his fishing trips, and sent them on errands to neighboring villages. He paid them in cowries and cloth, which they could trade for food. Verner and the other missionaries carried out corporal punishment for misbehavior; primarily for fighting and gambling.
In September [[1896]] [[Samuel Verner|Samuel Phillips Verner]] was sent to Luebo by the APCM in order to fulfill a stated requirement that Black missionaries be managed by white officials. The "Batetala boys" as Verner called them, gravitated to him, and he employed them as personal servants. He assigned them various household tasks, had them assist in his fishing trips, and sent them on errands to neighboring villages. He paid them in cowries and cloth, which they could trade for food.  


<!--During their time there in Luebo some of the older boys were married to girls of nearby villages. The growth of an anti-colonial insurgency by the Tetela.
In the spring of 1897 Verner abandoned his managerial duties to seek treasure and renown in the interior. The July return from his unsuccessful foray south met disaster when one of the two canoes was attacked by Bashilele (Lele) people into whose territory they had trespassed. In December of that year, Verner related that he had been wounded by a poisoned stake when he fell into a native trap. He credited Kassongo with saving his life by running for help from a healer in another village.


In the spring of 1897 Verner abandoned his managerial duties to seek treasure and renown in the interior. The July return from his unsuccessful foray south met disaster when one of the two canoes was attacked by Bashilele (Lele) people into whose territory they had trespassed. Verner subsequently suffered a mental breakdown.-->
Upon leaving the interior, Verner assembled a cargo of chickens, goats, peanuts, and palm wine. He also enjoined Kassongo and Kondola to accompany him, promising them a better life in the United States. After a visit to Antwerpen to seek a concession from King Leopold, the voyaged to New York City in February 1898.
 
On their first night in the new world, the two boys were left in Verner's lodgings at a rooming house while he visited an old friend. Upon learning of their presence, the landlord turned them out into the cold streets. Verner found them looking into shop windows when he returned and moved to another lodging. From New York Verner brought them on his travels South.
 
At one point, Verner offered to transfer custody of Kassongo and Kondola to the Smithsonian Institution, but they declined. They spent some time in the care of the Thornwell Orphanage in Clinton, South Carolina, and later resided for a month as houseguests of the Verners' family butler in Columbia. Their presence attracted a great deal of notice in the Black community and they received numerous curious visitors. For a while, the boys worked as laborers on the Verners' plantation. Kassongo contracted an illness and was treated by Dr Alonzo McClennan at his hospital in Charleston.
 
In December [[1901]] Kassongo and Kondola were enrolled at [[Stillman College]].


Kassongo was trampled to death during a mass stampede from the crowded [[Greater Shiloh Baptist Church]] prior to [[Booker T. Washington]]'s scheduled address to the [[1902 National Baptist Convention]].
Kassongo was trampled to death during a mass stampede from the crowded [[Greater Shiloh Baptist Church]] prior to [[Booker T. Washington]]'s scheduled address to the [[1902 National Baptist Convention]].
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<!--https://tavm.omeka.net/items/show/1113-->
<!--https://tavm.omeka.net/items/show/1113-->


<!--When he left the Congo and headed first to Antwerp to request a concession from Leopold and then back home to the United States, Verner brought Kondola and Kassongo with him. As the Batetela boys headed out from Sheppard’s mission led by this white man of God, they carried with them “chickens, goats, peanuts, palm wine,” and the multilayered meanings of a black New World vision of salvation.-->
<!--he made sure they eventually arrived at Stillman, he did not provide sufficient funds for their education. Rather he argued that they preferred to support themselves, even though Kondola wrote to him as late as 1939 asking for a small sum to buy shoes.-->
 
<!--However, if they believed that the entire United States would be a comfortable extension of Sheppard’s
mission, they had to have been sorely disappointed as early as their first night in New York. Verner had left them alone in a rooming house while he visited with an old university chum he had run into in the city. When the hotel’s manager found two black teenagers in his establishment, he evicted them, leaving the boys to wander the city streets shivering in the February chill. When Verner returned from his visit to find them hungrily gazing in a nearby storefront, he quickly secured them better lodging, but his initial disregard for them foreshadowed the ways his commitment to saving Africans withered as he focused on his own entrepreneurial and exploitative ventures once he arrived back home. He later tried unsuccessfully to rent the young men as models to the Smithsonian Institution, where he had deposited some artifacts,
and while he made sure they eventually arrived at Stillman, he did not provide sufficient funds for their education. Rather he argued that they preferred to support themselves, even though Kondola wrote to him as late as 1939 asking for a small sum to buy shoes.-->
 
<!--In the first months after their arrival, however, the young men also encountered a lively black American world that perhaps signaled for them the presence of Gods’ Towns in the United States. After leaving New York, but before enrolling the boys at Stillman, Verner left them for a time in the care of the Thornwell Orphanage and then at the house of his family’s butler in Columbia, South Carolina. For the month of their stay in the southern city, Kondola and Kassongo met local African Americans who had turned the butler’s home into a sort of Mecca as black South Carolinians sought an audience with the young Africans, who, in turn, demonstrated a keen interest in America’s ideas about their homeland. For a time, the boys also labored on a Verner family plantation, and when Kassongo fell ill, he received care at a black hospital in Charleston from Dr. Alonzo McClennan, an African American physician well known in both black and white
communities.62 -->


<!--Once enrolled at Stillman, Kondola and Kassongo studied alongside their African American student colleagues, and in September of 1902, Kassongo, along with “several thousand” black Alabamians, headed off to the Shiloh Negro Baptist Church in Birmingham to hear Booker T. Washington speak. Washington may even have been discussing his various exploits in Africa since he was a few years into a project in Togo where German officials had invited him to bring his methods of cotton farming to the colony. Additionally, just the year before, Zulu educator John Langalibalele Dube, who had been inspired
<!--Once enrolled at Stillman, Kondola and Kassongo studied alongside their African American student colleagues, and in September of 1902, Kassongo, along with “several thousand” black Alabamians, headed off to the Shiloh Negro Baptist Church in Birmingham to hear Booker T. Washington speak. Washington may even have been discussing his various exploits in Africa since he was a few years into a project in Togo where German officials had invited him to bring his methods of cotton farming to the colony. Additionally, just the year before, Zulu educator John Langalibalele Dube, who had been inspired
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* Verner, Samuel Phillips (1903) ''[https://www.google.com/books/edition/Pioneering_in_Central_Africa/uDoUAAAAIAAJ?hl=en Pioneering in Central Africa]''. Richmond, Virginia: Presbyterian Committee of Publication.
* Verner, Samuel Phillips (1903) ''[https://www.google.com/books/edition/Pioneering_in_Central_Africa/uDoUAAAAIAAJ?hl=en Pioneering in Central Africa]''. Richmond, Virginia: Presbyterian Committee of Publication.
* Likaka, Osumaka (2009) ''Naming Colonialism: History and Collective Memory in the Congo, 1870–1960.'' University of Wisconsin Press ISBN 9780299233631
* Likaka, Osumaka (2009) ''Naming Colonialism: History and Collective Memory in the Congo, 1870–1960.'' University of Wisconsin Press ISBN 9780299233631
* Newkirk, Pamela (2015) ''Spectacle: The Astonishing Life of Ota Benga.'' Amistad / Harper Collins ISBN 9780062201003
* Sotiropoulos, Karen (2016) "[https://www.jstor.org/stable/43818825 'Town of God': Ota Benga, the Batetela Boys, and the Promise of Black America]" ''Journal of World History'' Vol. 26, No. 1, pp. 41–76
* Sotiropoulos, Karen (2016) "[https://www.jstor.org/stable/43818825 'Town of God': Ota Benga, the Batetela Boys, and the Promise of Black America]" ''Journal of World History'' Vol. 26, No. 1, pp. 41–76


[[Category:1881 births]]
[[Category:1881 births]]
[[Category:1902 deaths]]
[[Category:1902 deaths]]

Revision as of 12:28, 8 January 2022

Kassongo Lutela, also known as Kassongo Lusuna or James Kassongo (born c. 1881 in Lusuna, Congo Free State; died September 19, 1902 in Birmingham) was a native Batetela (Tetela) youth, brought with another boy, Kondola, to the United States by a Presbyterian missionary.

Kassongo related that he was the son of an important man related to the chief of his village of Lusuna, in Batetela (Tetela) territory between the Lomami and Lualaba rivers in the Congo Free State, then the personal possession of King Leopold II of Belgium. Kassongo was considered a nephew to the chief, and was taught all the skills that pertained to his station. His name may have signified "tall and lean"1., and recalled the name of a trading post, Piani Kasongo, founded and operated by ivory and slave trader Afro-Omani Tippu Tip, newly appointed Governor of the Stanley Falls District.

Kassongo, still quite young, traveled as a bearer and servant to the older warriors from his village who fought under Belgian commander Francis Dhanis against Tippu Tip and other traders during the Congo Arab war. Afterward he remained with the village warriors as part of a militia aligned with Leopold's Force Publique at Lusambo and Luluaburg. Belgian officials soon determined that boys spending idle days in the company of militiamen could be detrimental to good order, and rather than return them to their home villages, declared them wards of the state and distributed them to the Christian missions operating in the region.

By 1895, Captain Commandant Paul-Amédée Le Marinel delivered Kassonga, Kondola and eight older boys to Luebo, the site of a school and church operated by William Sheppard for the American Presbyterian Congo Mission (APCM). The boys were given beds and assigned to work alongside the Luba laborers prevalent in the community to earn their keep. For an hour a day they were taught by Lillian Thomas and Maria Fearing, graduates of Talladega College, and William's wife, Lucy, who was from Birmingham

The boys were tutored in the Luba language and taught some arithmetic, along with the memorization of scripture and hymns. They were judged to be quick learners and generally obedient, though sometimes given to fighting and gambling, for which they were punished by whipping. The the school kept the female Luba students sequestered, some of the older boys were given permission to marry girls from neighboring villages.

In September 1896 Samuel Phillips Verner was sent to Luebo by the APCM in order to fulfill a stated requirement that Black missionaries be managed by white officials. The "Batetala boys" as Verner called them, gravitated to him, and he employed them as personal servants. He assigned them various household tasks, had them assist in his fishing trips, and sent them on errands to neighboring villages. He paid them in cowries and cloth, which they could trade for food.

In the spring of 1897 Verner abandoned his managerial duties to seek treasure and renown in the interior. The July return from his unsuccessful foray south met disaster when one of the two canoes was attacked by Bashilele (Lele) people into whose territory they had trespassed. In December of that year, Verner related that he had been wounded by a poisoned stake when he fell into a native trap. He credited Kassongo with saving his life by running for help from a healer in another village.

Upon leaving the interior, Verner assembled a cargo of chickens, goats, peanuts, and palm wine. He also enjoined Kassongo and Kondola to accompany him, promising them a better life in the United States. After a visit to Antwerpen to seek a concession from King Leopold, the voyaged to New York City in February 1898.

On their first night in the new world, the two boys were left in Verner's lodgings at a rooming house while he visited an old friend. Upon learning of their presence, the landlord turned them out into the cold streets. Verner found them looking into shop windows when he returned and moved to another lodging. From New York Verner brought them on his travels South.

At one point, Verner offered to transfer custody of Kassongo and Kondola to the Smithsonian Institution, but they declined. They spent some time in the care of the Thornwell Orphanage in Clinton, South Carolina, and later resided for a month as houseguests of the Verners' family butler in Columbia. Their presence attracted a great deal of notice in the Black community and they received numerous curious visitors. For a while, the boys worked as laborers on the Verners' plantation. Kassongo contracted an illness and was treated by Dr Alonzo McClennan at his hospital in Charleston.

In December 1901 Kassongo and Kondola were enrolled at Stillman College.

Kassongo was trampled to death during a mass stampede from the crowded Greater Shiloh Baptist Church prior to Booker T. Washington's scheduled address to the 1902 National Baptist Convention.

Notes

  1. Likaka-2009



References

  • "More Than One Hundred Negroes Crushed to Death as a Result of a Panic Following a Cry of 'Fire.'" (September 20, 1902) The Birmingham News, pp. 1, 7
  • Verner, Samuel Phillips (1903) Pioneering in Central Africa. Richmond, Virginia: Presbyterian Committee of Publication.
  • Likaka, Osumaka (2009) Naming Colonialism: History and Collective Memory in the Congo, 1870–1960. University of Wisconsin Press ISBN 9780299233631
  • Newkirk, Pamela (2015) Spectacle: The Astonishing Life of Ota Benga. Amistad / Harper Collins ISBN 9780062201003
  • Sotiropoulos, Karen (2016) "'Town of God': Ota Benga, the Batetela Boys, and the Promise of Black America" Journal of World History Vol. 26, No. 1, pp. 41–76
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