Banneker's Almanac

ON THIS DAY in 1731, Benjamin Banneker, an American of mixed African and English descent, was born in the autumn countryside of what is now Maryland.

Like the details of his life, his accomplishments are but wisps that dance faintly on history’s wind.

At a time when African Americans were viewed as incapable of merit, Banneker became a surveyor, author, mathematician and astronomer. Along the banks of the Potomac in 1791, he assisted Major Andrew Ellicott survey the land upon which Washington DC would be built. The Georgetown Weekly Ledger noted that Ellicott was "attended by Benjamin Banneker, an Ethiopian, whose abilities, as a surveyor, and an astronomer, clearly prove that [Thomas] Jefferson's concluding that race of men were void of mental endowments, was without foundation."

In 1792, Banneker published his most famous work, an almanac based on what the PBS series Africans in America described as “his own painstakingly calculated ephemeris (table of the position of celestial bodies), that also included commentaries, literature, and fillers that had a political and humanitarian purpose.”

Later almanacs would often be prefaced with praise for Banneker. This excerpt from a 1796 edition:

Not you ye proud, impute to these the blame
If Afric's sons to genius are unknown,
For Banneker has prov'd they may acquire a name,
As bright, as lasting, as your own

His is the thin reed of history, layered over centuries with many others, which built America. It is worth pausing then in this quiet corner of digital space to reflect on the wafting wisps that only faintly sketch Benjamin Banneker but whose strands ultimately congealed into me.