Mythology of Benjamin Banneker

According to accounts that began to appear during the 1960s or earlier, a substantial mythology has exaggerated the accomplishments of Benjamin Banneker (1731–1806), an African-American naturalist, mathematician, astronomer and almanac author who also worked as a surveyor and farmer. Well-known speakers, writers, artists and others have created, repeated and embellished a large number of questionable reports during the two centuries that have elapsed since Banneker lived. Several urban legends 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. Others involve his clock, his astronomical works, his almanacs and his journals. Although part of African-American culture, many of these accounts lack support by historical evidence. Some are contradicted by evidence. A 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 since the two centuries he lived.

Washington, D.C.

A number of undocumented stories connecting Benjamin Banneker with the planning and survey of the federal capital city have appeared over the years. During the late 1900s and early 2000s, historian Silvio Bedini wrote and performed research about Banneker that refuted some of these tales while working in Washington, D.C., for over 40 years at the Smithsonian Institution's Museum of History and Technology/National Museum of American History. In early 1791, Andrew Ellicott and his team, which initially included Banneker, began a survey of the boundaries of the future 100 square miles (259.0 km2) federal district. The district, which would contain the nation's capital, was to be located along the Potomac River (see Boundary Markers of the Original District of Columbia). Soon afterwards, Pierre (Peter) Charles L'Enfant began to independently prepare a plan for the smaller federal capital city (the City of Washington), to be located within the federal district on the Maryland side of the river in accordance with the 1790 federal Residence Act, as amended (see L'Enfant Plan). In late February 1792, President George Washington dismissed L'Enfant, who had failed to have his plan published and was experiencing frequent conflicts with three commissioners that Washington had appointed to supervise the planning and survey of the federal district and city.

In a 1969 publication, Bedini reported that Martha Ellicott Tyson, a Quaker abolitionist who was a daughter of George Ellicott (Andrew Ellicott's cousin) and a co-founder of Swarthmore College, had prepared an account about Banneker's alleged involvement with the survey and planning of the federal city within her papers, which her own daughter had edited after her death. The Friends (Quakers) Book Association published the edited papers in Philadelphia during 1884. Bedini noted that the association's publication stated:

Major Ellicott selected Benjamin Banneker as his assistant upon this occasion, and it was with his aid that the lines of the Federal Territory, as the District of Columbia was then called, were run.It was the work, also of Major Ellicott, under the orders of General Washington, then President of the United States, to locate the sites of the Capitol, President's House, Treasury and other public buildings. In this, also, Banneker was his assistant. Bedini further noted that writers had repeated and embellished this account, sometimes in conflicting ways:

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. One version of the tale claims that Banneker "made astronomical calculations and implementations" that established points of significance within the city, including those of the White House, the Capitol, the Treasury Building and the "16th Street Meridian" (see White House meridian). Other versions state that Banneker assisted Andrew Ellicott in locating the sites of some or all of those features or "laid out Washington".

Another Banneker story emerged in 1921 when Daniel A. P. Murray, an African American historian serving as an assistant librarian of the Library of Congress, read a paper before the Banneker Association of Washington that connected Banneker with L'Enfant's plan for the capital city. The paper stated:

... L'Enfant made a demand that could not be accorded and ... in a fit of high dudgeon gathered all his plans and papers and unceremoniously left. ... Washington was in despair, since it involved a defeat of all of his cherished plans in regard to the "Federal City." This perturbation on his part was quickly ended, however, when it transpired that Banneker had daily for the purposes of calculation and practice, transcribed nearly all L'Enfant's field notes and through the assistance they afforded Mr. Andrew Ellicott, L'Enfant's assistant, Washington City was laid down very nearly on the original lines. ... By this act the brain of the Afro-American is indissolubly linked with the Capital and nation. In 1976, Jerome Klinkowitz stated within a book that described the works of Banneker and other early black American writers that Murray's report had initiated a myth about Banneker's career. Klinkowitz noted that Murray had not provided any support for his claim that Banneker had recalled L'Enfant's plan for Washington, D.C. Klinkowitz also described a number of other Banneker myths and subsequent works that had refuted them. When describing in 1929 the ceremonial presentation to Howard University in Washington, D.C., of a sundial memorializing Banneker, an African-American newspaper, The Chicago Defender, reported that a speaker had claimed that:

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