Editing Benjamin Banneker (section)

==Mythology and commemorations==
{{Further|Mythology of Benjamin Banneker|Commemorations of Benjamin Banneker}}
[[File:Benjamin Banneker statue at the National Museum of African American History and Culture.jpg|thumb|right|upright=0.7|Statue of Benjamin Banneker in the [[Smithsonian Institution]]'s [[National Museum of African American History and Culture]] in Washington, D.C. (2020)]]
A substantial [[mythology]] exaggerating Banneker's accomplishments has developed during the two centuries that have elapsed since his death, becoming a part of [[African-American culture]].<ref name=Haverford>{{cite web|url=https://www.haverford.edu/library/news/book-month-bannekers-almanac|title=A look into Benjamin Banneker's 1793 Almanac.|work=Book of the Month: Banneker's Almanac|date=April 18, 2016|location=[[Haverford, Pennsylvania]]|publisher=[[Haverford College]]|access-date=April 9, 2020|quote=In 1806, shortly after Banneker's death, a fire at his home destroyed most of his personal papers (Gillispie). This gap in substantial archival material has hardly hindered the development of the Benjamin Banneker legend; perhaps it has even aided its growth. ..... The narrative that tells of Banneker's life as one of mythical success and unprecedented exceptionalism easily draws an audience, but it washes over what might be more intellectually rewarding questions about the man's life. .... For now, the legend of Benjamin Banneker will continue to exist in his old almanacs and in present culture, serving as an inspiring enigma for those who wonder what lies beyond the surface-level stories of the past.|archive-date=October 21, 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171021012630/https://www.haverford.edu/library/news/book-month-bannekers-almanac|url-status=live}}<br /></ref><ref name=keane> {{cite web|first=Louis|last=Keene|url=https://www.whitehousehistory.org/benjamin-banneker|title=Benjamin Banneker: The Black Tobacco Farmer Who The Presidents Couldn't Ignore|publisher=[[White House Historical Association|The White House Historical Association]]|access-date=February 25, 2020|quote=Perhaps owing to the scarcity of recorded fact about his remarkable life, and because he was often invoked symbolically to advance social causes like abolition, Banneker’s story has been susceptible to mythmaking. He has been incorrectly credited with drawing the street grid of Washington, D.C., making the first clock on the Eastern seaboard, being the first professional astronomer in America, and discovering the seventeen-year birth cycle of cicadas.|archive-date=August 31, 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190831054904/https://www.whitehousehistory.org/benjamin-banneker|url-status=live}}<br /></ref> Several such [[urban legend]]s describe Banneker's alleged activities in the [[Washington, D.C.]], area around the time that he assisted Andrew Ellicott in the federal district boundary survey.<ref name=Founders/><ref name=Shipler>{{cite book|last=Shipler|first=David K.|chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=1rLbI73FctUC&pg=PA196|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=1rLbI73FctUC&pg=printsec|chapter=The Myths of America|title=A Country of Strangers: Blacks and Whites in America|pages=196–197|year=1998|location=New York|publisher=[[Vintage Books]]|isbn=0679734546|lccn=97002810|oclc=39849003|via=[[Google Books]]|quote=The Banneker story, impressive as it was, got embellished in 1987, when the public school system in Portland, Oregon, published ''[[African-American Baseline Essays]]'', a thick stack of loose-leaf background papers for teachers, commissioned to encourage black history instruction. They have been used in Detroit, Atlanta, Fort Lauderdale, Newark, and scattered schools elsewhere, although they have been attacked for gross inaccuracy in an entire literature of detailed criticism by respected historians. ....}}</ref><ref>(1) [http://www.boundarystones.org/articles/rchs_1969.pdf Bedini, 1969, p. 7.] "The name of Benjamin Banneker, the Afro-American self-taught mathematician and almanac-maker, occurs again and again in the several published accounts of the survey of Washington City [D.C.] begun in 1791, but with conflicting reports of the role which he played. Writers have implied a wide range of involvement, from the keeper of horses or supervisor of the woodcutters, to the full responsibility of not only the survey of the ten-mile square but the design of the city as well. None of these accounts has described the contribution which Banneker actually made."<br />(2) [[iarchive:lifeofbenjaminba00silv/page/126/mode/1up|Bedini, 1972, p. 126.]] "Benjamin Banneker's name does not appear on any of the contemporary documents or records relating to the selection, planning, and survey of the City of Washington.  An exhaustive search of the files under Public Buildings and Grounds in the U.S. National Archives and of the several collections in the Library of Congress have proved fruitless.  A careful perusal of all known surviving correspondence and papers of Andrew Ellicott and of Pierre Charles L'Enfant has likewise failed to reveal mention of Banneker.  This conclusively [sic] dispels the legend that after L'Enfant's dismissal and his refusal to make available his plan of the city, Ellicott was able to reconstruct it in detail from Banneker's recollection.”<br />(3) [[iarchive:lifeofbenjaminba00silv/page/403/mode/1up|Bedini, 1972, p. 403, Item 85]] "William Loren Katz. ''Eyewitness, the Negro in American History''. New York. Putnam Publishing Corp., 1967 pp. 19–31, 61–62.<br />Among the misstatements are the claims.... that George Ellicott worked with Banneker in the survey of Washington, that Banneker was appointed to the Commission at a suggestion made by Jefferson to Washington, and that Banneker selected the sites of the principal buildings. The fiction that Banneker re-created L'Enfant's plan from memory is again presented, and his almanacs are said to have been published for a period of ten years."<br />(4) [https://archives.profsurv.com/magazine/article.aspx?i=567 Toscano, 2000.] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190912002204/https://archives.profsurv.com/magazine/article.aspx?i=567|date=September 12, 2019}} "Some writers, in an effort to build up their hero, claim that Banneker was the designer of Washington. Other writers have asserted that Banneker's role in the survey is a myth without documentation. Neither group is correct. Bedini does a professional job of sorting out the truth from the falsehoods."<br />(5) {{cite news |last=Martel |first=Erich |date=February 20, 1994 |title=The Egyptian Illusion |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/1994/02/20/the-egyptian-illusion/ee123656-ca7f-4ef7-8f28-99d7edd166ba/ |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180918055745/https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/1994/02/20/the-egyptian-illusion/ee123656-ca7f-4ef7-8f28-99d7edd166ba/ |archive-date=September 18, 2018 |access-date=September 17, 2018 |newspaper=[[The Washington Post]] |department=Opinions |quote=Had the author consulted "The Life of Benjamin Banneker" by Silvio Bedini, considered the definitive biography, he would have discovered no evidence for these claims. Jefferson appointed Andrew Ellicott to conduct the survey; Ellicott made Banneker his assistant for three months in 1791.}}<br />(6) [[iarchive:lifeofbenjaminba00bedi/page/132/mode/1up|Bedini, 1999, p. 132-136.]] "An exhaustive search of government repositories, including the Public Buildings and Grounds files in the National Archives, and various collections in the Library of Congress, failed to turn up Banneker's name on any of the contemporary documents or records related to the selection, planning and survey of the City of Washington. Nor was he mentioned in any of the surviving correspondence and papers of Andrew Ellicott and of Pierre Charles L'Enfant.... Although the exact date of Banneker's departure from the survey is not specified in Ellicott's report of expenditures, it occurred sometime late in the month of April 1791, following the arrival of one of Ellicott's brothers. It was not until some ten months after Banneker's departure from the scene that L'Enfant was dismissed, by means of a letter from Jefferson dated February 27, 1792. This conclusively [sic] dispels any basis for the legend that after L'Enfant's dismissal and his refusal to make available his plan of the city, Banneker recollected the plan in detail from which Ellicott was able to reconstruct it."<br />(7) [[iarchive:banneker00char/page/142/mode/1up|Cerami, 2002, pp. 142–143.]]<br />(8) {{cite web |last=Levine |first=Michael |date=November 10, 2003 |title=L'Enfant designed more than D.C.: He designed a 200-year-old controversy |url=http://dcpages.ari.net/History/Planning_DC.shtml |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20031206191132/http://dcpages.ari.net/History/Planning_DC.shtml |archive-date=December 6, 2003 |access-date=December 31, 2016 |work=History: Planning Our Capital City: Get to know the District of Columbia |publisher=DCpages.com}}<br />(9) {{cite book |last=Weatherly |first=Myra |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=I9iwiT_k4WoC&pg=printsec |title=Benjamin Banneker: American Scientific Pioneer |publisher=[[Capstone Publishers|Compass Point Books]] |year=2006 |isbn=0756515793 |location=[[Minneapolis]], [[Minnesota]] |pages=76–77 |chapter=An Important Task |lccn=2005028708 |oclc=61864300 |quote=<br>The conflicts surrounding L'Enfant gave rise to an often—repeated story that involved Banneker.  According to the story, Banneker, having seen the original design for the city only once, re-created it in detail after L'Enfant returned to France with the original plans. This legend has led some people to credit Banneker with a greater role in creating the capital city. However, there is no evidence that Banneker contributed anything to the design of the city or that he ever met L'Enfant.<br>Modern historians acknowledge that the inaccurate information—the myths surrounding Banneker—resulted in his contributions to the city being overvalued. Unfortunately, those myths sometimes obscure Banneker's greatest contribution to society—the almanacs that he would publish in his later years. |access-date=August 27, 2019 |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=I9iwiT_k4WoC&pg=PA76 |via=[[Google Books]]}}.<br />(10) {{cite web |author=Bigbytes |title=Benjamin Banneker Stories |url=http://dcsymbols.com/ovason/banneker.htm |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20101208194042/http://dcsymbols.com/ovason/banneker.htm |archive-date=December 8, 2010 |access-date=January 1, 2017 |publisher=dcsymbols dot com}}<br />(11) {{cite web |last=Keene |first=Louis |title=Benjamin Banneker: The Black Tobacco Farmer Who The Presidents Couldn't Ignore |url=https://www.whitehousehistory.org/benjamin-banneker |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190831054904/https://www.whitehousehistory.org/benjamin-banneker |archive-date=August 31, 2019 |access-date=February 25, 2020 |publisher=[[White House Historical Association|The White House Historical Association]] |quote=Perhaps owing to the scarcity of recorded fact about his remarkable life, and because he was often invoked symbolically to advance social causes like abolition, Banneker’s story has been susceptible to mythmaking. He has been incorrectly credited with drawing the street grid of Washington, D.C.}}</ref> Others involve his clock, his astronomical works, his almanacs and his journals.<ref name=Shipler/><ref>(1) [https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uiug.30112037299119;view=1up;seq=7 Whiteman, Maxwell (1969). BENJAMIN BANNEKER: Surveyor and Astronomer: 1731–1806: A biographical note] ''In'' [https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uiug.30112037299119;view=1up;seq=5 Whiteman, Maxwell (ed.)] "The plan for a "Peace Office" in the Government of the United States, which also appeared in this issue (Banneker's 1793 Philadelphia almanac) has been attributed to Banneker. According to Edwin Wolf 2nd, Librarian of the [[Library Company of Philadelphia]] from whose institution these copies have been made, the "Peace Office" is the work of Dr. [[Benjamin Rush]]."<br />(2) [https://archive.org/details/lifeofbenjaminba00silv/page/186/mode/1up Bedini, 1972, p. 186.] "Another important item in the 1793 almanac was "A Plan Of a ''Peace-Office'' for the United States," which aroused a good deal of comment at the time. It was believed by many to have been Banneker's own work. Even within recent decades its authorship has been debated. In 1947 it was identified without question as the work of Dr. Benjamin Rush, in a volume of his writings that appeared in that year."<br />(3) [https://archive.org/details/lifeofbenjaminba00silv/page/403/mode/1up Bedini, 1972, p. 403, Item 85] "William Loren Katz. ''Eyewitness, the Negro in American History''. New York. Putnam Publishing Corp., 1967 pp. 19–31, 61–62.<br />Brief account of Banneker's career and contributions, which are stated to have been in "the fields of science, mathematics, and political affairs, .... ." Among the misstatements are the claims that Banneker produced the first clock made entirely with American parts, .... ."<br />(4) {{cite news|url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/1994/02/20/the-egyptian-illusion/ee123656-ca7f-4ef7-8f28-99d7edd166ba/|title=The Egyptian Illusion|last=Martel|first=Erich|department=Opinions|newspaper=[[The Washington Post]]|date=February 20, 1994|access-date=September 17, 2018|quote=.... "Banneker "wrote a proposal for the establishment of a United States Department of Peace," according to the essay on African American scientists.<br>Had the author consulted "The Life of Benjamin Banneker" by Silvio Bedini, considered the definitive biography, he would have discovered no evidence for these claims. .... Benjamin Rush authored the Department of Peace proposal; the confusion arose among earlier biographers because the proposal appeared in Banneker's 1793 almanac.|archive-date=September 18, 2018|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180918055745/https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/1994/02/20/the-egyptian-illusion/ee123656-ca7f-4ef7-8f28-99d7edd166ba/|url-status=live}}<br />(5) [https://archive.org/details/lifeofbenjaminba00bedi/page/43/mode/1up Bedini, 1999, p. 43.] "Banneker's clock was by no means the first timepiece in tidewater Maryland, as occasionally has erroneously been claimed. Timepieces were well known and available from the very earliest English settlements, ...."<br />(6) {{cite web|first=Louis|last=Keene|url=https://www.whitehousehistory.org/benjamin-banneker|title=Benjamin Banneker: The Black Tobacco Farmer Who The Presidents Couldn't Ignore|publisher=[[White House Historical Association|The White House Historical Association]]|access-date=February 25, 2020|quote=Perhaps owing to the scarcity of recorded fact about his remarkable life, and because he was often invoked symbolically to advance social causes like abolition, Banneker’s story has been susceptible to mythmaking. He has been incorrectly credited with ......, making the first clock on the Eastern seaboard, being the first professional astronomer in America, and discovering the seventeen-year birth cycle of cicadas.|archive-date=August 31, 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190831054904/https://www.whitehousehistory.org/benjamin-banneker|url-status=live}}</ref>

A [[Postage stamps and postal history of the United States|United States postage stamp]] and the names of a number of recreational and cultural facilities, schools, streets, and other facilities and institutions throughout the [[United States]] have commemorated Banneker's documented and mythical accomplishments throughout the years since he lived. In 1983, [[Rita Dove]], a future [[United States Poet Laureate|Poet Laureate of the United States]],<ref>{{cite web|title=Comprehensive Biography of Rita Dove|url=http://people.virginia.edu/~rfd4b/compbio.html|work=The Rita Dove Home Page|publisher=[[University of Virginia]]|access-date=February 20, 2018|quote=In 1993 Rita Dove was appointed Poet Laureate of the United States and Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress, making her the youngest person — and the first African-American — to receive this highest official honor in American poetry.|archive-date=February 20, 2018|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180220152646/http://people.virginia.edu/~rfd4b/compbio.html|url-status=live}}</ref> wrote a biographical poem about Banneker while on the faculty of [[Arizona State University]].<ref>(1) {{cite web|last=Dove|first=Rita|author-link=Rita Dove|url=http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/172127|work=Poems & Poets|title=Banneker|publisher=[[Poetry Foundation]]|year=1983|access-date=February 20, 2018|archive-date=February 20, 2018|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180220134254/https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43354/banneker|url-status=live}}<br>(2) {{cite web|first=Amanda|last=Newton|url=http://ritadoveatwandl.blogspot.com/2012/03/analysis-on-banneker-and-parsley.html|title=Analysis on "Banneker" and "Parsley"|work=Spotlight on Rita Dove|date=March 4, 2012|publisher=[[Blogger (service)|Blogger]]|access-date=February 20, 2018|archive-date=February 20, 2018|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180220141926/http://ritadoveatwandl.blogspot.com/2012/03/analysis-on-banneker-and-parsley.html|url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|title=Comprehensive Biography of Rita Dove|url=http://people.virginia.edu/~rfd4b/compbio.html|work=The Rita Dove Home Page|publisher=[[University of Virginia]]|access-date=February 20, 2018|quote=Ms. Dove taught creative writing at Arizona State University from 1981 to 1989|archive-date=February 20, 2018|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180220152646/http://people.virginia.edu/~rfd4b/compbio.html|url-status=live}}</ref>