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; an African Savage's Own Story
[edit]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
[edit]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]
Popular culture
[edit]LoBagola was the subject of a 2016 episode of the Futility Closet Podcast.[4]
External links
[edit]References
[edit]- ^ a b Lindfors, Bernth (1999). Africans on Stage: Studies in Ethnological Show Business. Indiana University Press. ISBN 0-253-21245-6.
- ^ The book was advertised with other Knopf titles in the April 1930 issue of The American Mercury, at p. xiv.
- ^ 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.
- ^ "Futility Closet 89: An African from Baltimore". 11 January 2016.
- ibn LoBagola, Bata Kindai Amgoza (1970). LoBagola; an African Savage's Own Story. A.A. Knopf. ISBN 0-674-02180-0.
- "Man Without A Country". Time. 1930-03-24. Archived from the original on September 30, 2007. Retrieved 2008-02-04.
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- 1877 births
- 1947 deaths
- Impostors
- Literary forgeries
- Writers from Baltimore
- People prosecuted under anti-homosexuality laws
- American vaudeville performers
- American people who died in prison custody
- Prisoners who died in New York (state) detention
- American memoirists
- African-American non-fiction writers
- American male entertainers
- American male non-fiction writers
- Deaths from pulmonary edema
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