Celebrating July 4th with "Banneker" by Rita Dove
But then I remembered this read a Dove poem about a really interesting character in our history. His name was Benjamin Bannecker. He was born in the first third of the 18th century, and his life spanned the rest of that century and a little bit beyond. He was an inventor, and the poem mentions one of his inventions. He was the first black man to devise, out of his own observation and thinking, an almanac and also to predict a solar eclipse accurately
Deborah Pardes
@DBPardes · 1:17
I had never heard of him. And what are the chances of someone as intelligent and also so dreamy as to find kind of a course for the moon and the sun and the stars for him to be considered a wise and potentially useful person in the commission? I can't believe he rose to those ranks and was put in position, because most of these people are looked at as freaks. They're looked at as outliers who discover the heavenly bodies and how they move