What do you see when you look at the stars? Benjamin Banneker saw astronomical patterns from which he could make calculations and predictions. A mathematician and astronomer, Benjamin Banneker was born on November 9, 1731, in Ellicott’s Mills, Maryland.


Largely self-taught, Banneker was one of the first African Americans to gain distinction in science. His significant accomplishments include the successful prediction of a solar eclipse, publishing his own almanac, and the surveying of Washington, D.C. Banneker spent most of his life on his family’s 100-acre farm outside Baltimore. There, he taught himself astronomy by watching the stars and learned advanced mathematics from borrowed textbooks…
(Click on link below to read the entire article)
https://www.americaslibrary.gov/jb/colonial/jb_colonial_banneker_1.html
(Watch video below on the life/history of Mr. Banneker)
Thank you, K!
DC’s most overlooked first Black architect, engineer, surveyor, Almanac Writer, and genius to be acknowledged by Jefferson and other white men as making them change their ways of thinking in regards to the inferiority of Black intelligence!
(even though Paul Lawrence Dunbar, as my alma mater, from back when we were rivals with students at Banneker, should take precedence…)
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Most definitely! Especially coming from a harden racist such as Jefferson he had no choice to acknowledge the brilliance of Mr. Banneker.
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🙂
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