The Life of Benjamin Banneker

Book excerpt: Immerse Yourself in the Life and Times of the Nation's First Black ScientistBenjamin Banneker, celebrated today as the nation's first Black scientist and man of letters, was a largely self-taught mathematician, surveyor, and astronomer who came of age during America's revolutionary period. Silvio Bedini's acclaimed and definitive biography, The Life of Benjamin Banneker, is his story.Banneker was born a free Black in 1731 and quickly exhibited an extraordinary facility for mathematics. Through his study of astronomy, he accurately predicted the solar eclipse that occurred in 1789, but his true acclaim is based on the almanacs he published between 1792 and 1797, which contained tidal information from Maryland to Canada, population figures for the burgeoning United States, astronomical data and weather predictions, and a wide variety of writings and occurrences of the time. He was instrumentally one of the nation's earliest record keepers.In 1791, Banneker also demonstrated his role as an advocate for civil rights when he sent a copy of one of his almanac manuscripts to Thomas Jefferson (the nation's first Secretary of State), in which he enclosed a letter that challenged the Secretary's views on slavery and advocated for its abolishment. Both the letter and Jefferson's reply were soon published, notably representing two prevalent forces of the era in contrasting the humanitarian perspective of Banneker with those of the politician Jefferson, thus delineating a point of contention that continues to resonate today.Using primary source material, author Silvio Bedini explores the facts, myths, and legends surrounding Benjamin Banneker. This republished revised and expanded edition, complete with over 75 photographs of documents and tools, skillfully captures the life of a gifted Black man living during eighteenth-century America. It is a vivid portrayal that readers will find engaging from its first page to its last.