BANNEKER, BENJAMIN

(1731-1806), African-American scientist. Banneker was the country's first important black scientist, and his accomplishments were vital to abolitionists combating late-eighteenth-century claims of innate African inferiority. The son of free African-Americans, Banneker lived his entire life on the Maryland tobacco farm he inherited from his father. His mechanical and scientific genius appeared early. Although he had received only a few winters' education at a country school, he constructed a striking clock of hand-carved wooden parts. This feat of untutored craftsmanship—he had never seen such a clock—brought him local fame.

At about age fifty-seven, Banneker borrowed astronomical instruments and texts from a Quaker neighbor, George Ellicot. Working alone, he soon grasped the principles of calculus and spherical trigonometry that were necessary to construct an astronomical almanac—a virtually unheard-of feat of self-education. This accomplishment led to plans by abolition societies in Pennsylvania and Maryland to publish Banneker's almanac as a testimony to the intellectual capabilities of Africans.

In 1791, the surveyor appointed to lay out the boundaries of the District of Columbia employed Banneker as his assistant. This appointment was, in itself, used to advantage in the campaign to undermine the arguments about blacks' mental inferiority. In a reference to ruminations about African inferiority in Thomas Jefferson's Notes on the State of Virginia, one newspaper reported the appointment of Banneker, "an Ethiopian whose abilities as surveyor and astronomer already prove that Mr. Jefferson's concluding that that race of men were void of mental endowment was without foundation."

After three months of surveying in the field, Banneker returned to preparing an almanac for 1792. It was the manuscript of this volume that he sent to Secretary of State Jefferson, along with a letter that represents one of the most effective protests against slavery written by an African-American in the early national period. Although he was a retiring and extremely modest man, Banneker, in this letter, was at pains to counter Jefferson's reflections on African inferiority. He also reminded Jefferson of his stated belief that "all men are created equal"—an "invaluable doctrine" that Jefferson was violating "in detaining by fraud and violence so numerous a part of my brethren under groaning captivity and cruel oppression." Jefferson's ambiguous reply declared his wish to "see such proofs as you exhibit, that nature has given to our black brethren, talents equal to those of the other colors of men." He ignored Banneker's strictures about continuing to hold slaves, however.

Banneker's first published almanac included a biographical sketch by one of his chief sponsors, James McHenry, who indicated that the issuing of the almanacs was part of the political program of a group of abolitionists, many of them Quakers. McHenry described Banneker's achievements as evidence that "the powers of the mind are disconnected with the colour of the skin." At least twenty-nine editions of his almanacs appeared between 1791 and 1796 in Philadelphia, Baltimore, Wilmington, Petersburg, Trenton, and Richmond.

Banneker continued to compute the astronomical calculations for his almanacs until 1804, although no almanacs were published after 1797. When he died in 1806 on his farm, he was known throughout the United States and abroad as the "African astronomer."

Silvio A. Bedini, The Life of Benjamin Banneker (1984).

Gary B. Nash

See also Abolitionist Movement; Free Negroes, 1619-1860; Science and Technology.