Bata LoBagola

Bata Kindai Amgoza ibn LoBagola (1877–1947) was an early 20th-century American impostor and entertainer who presented an exoticized identity as a native of Africa, when in reality he was born Joseph Howard Lee in Baltimore, Maryland. Despite an impoverished start in life and a lack of education, and a series of scandalous arrests related to homosexual activities, mainly involving underage individuals,[1] LoBagola maintained a long and colorful career posing as an African "savage", during which he delivered lectures to many institutions and conducted public debates.

LoBagola in 1911

LoBagola; an African Savage's Own Story

LoBagola published some articles in Scribner's Magazine in 1929 and the publishers A.A. Knopf decided to produce a book version to be titled LoBagola; an African Savage's Own Story,[2] in an attempt to capitalise upon the then-current vogue for "exotic customs" of "places untouched by Europe".[3] Knopf made much of LoBagola being a "savage" from a region of Africa supposedly never visited by white people, though LoBagola described himself as a "Black Jew", claiming that he was descended from people who had fled the Holy Land following the destruction of Herod's Temple.

The book was virtually unedited and came across as a picaresque pseudo-biography, studded with LoBagola's observations of "West African" ways and his adventures in many lands.

Death

LoBagola died in Attica Prison in 1947, with eighteen months of his current sentence remaining, of a pulmonary edema. He was buried in the prison cemetery.[1]

LoBagola was the subject of a 2016 episode of the Futility Closet Podcast.[4]

References
  1. Lindfors, Bernth (1999). Africans on Stage: Studies in Ethnological Show Business. Indiana University Press. ISBN 0-253-21245-6.
  2. The book was advertised with other Knopf titles in the April 1930 issue of The American Mercury, at p. xiv.
  3. Hutchinson, George (2006). In Search of Nella Larsen: A Biography of the Color Line. Harvard University Press. pp. 349–350. ISBN 0-674-02180-0.
  4. "Futility Closet 89: An African from Baltimore". 11 January 2016.


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