He Was A Free-Born African American

On November 9, 1731, Benjamin Banneker was born in Baltimore County, which is found in the state of Maryland's northern region. His father Robert was an ex-slave who bought his own freedom from slavery, while his mother Mary was a free African American. Several biographers assert that his mother Mary was a mulatto since she was the offspring of Molly Welsh, an Englishwoman, and Banneka, an African freed slave, even if this cannot be proven with confidence.

Banneker was a knowledgeable surveyor who developed his skills while working for the Ellicotts, a prominent Quaker family in Maryland. Benjamin Banneker, who is often regarded as America's first black scientist and civil engineer, was born free, which was unusual at a time when an estimated 750,000 black people lived in the country as slaves.

Banneker, a self-taught natural philosopher who later became an amateur mathematician and astronomer, contributed to the mapping of the District of Columbia, the nation's new capital, and wrote widely-read almanacs. His most audacious deed, nevertheless, was to publicly disagree with Thomas Jefferson on the subject of racism and slavery.

Jefferson made various attempts to gradually abolish slavery in the United States early in his political career. He devised a statute in Virginia in 1778 that forbade the importing of new slaves from Africa, and he put forth a bill to outlaw slavery in the expanding Northwest territory in 1784. These restrictions, he thought, would help phase out the slave economy over time.

Jefferson yet maintained his belief in the moral and social superiority of whites over blacks in spite of his reservations about the slave trade. In actuality, he sold and possessed more than 700 slaves directly. And there is evidence that Jefferson had a long-term relationship with Sally Hemings, one of his slaves, and had six children with her.