Benjamin Banneker Synopsis

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African American History:

Benjamin Banneker



Benjamin Banneker was an African-American born 1731 in Baltimore County; in

tidewater Maryland. Banneker lived in Maryland for just about his whole entire life. On the

western side of the Chesapeake Bay. He comes from a slave background just like many other

African Americans at that time. His mother Mary who married his father a Negro named Robert

in 1730. Benjamin Banneker was one of the most intelligent mathematician and astronomers to

ever live. Banneker is not only a significant person to Africans but too human kind period; he

achieve so much with so little and should be viewed as a hero for every ethnic background.

Benjamin Banneker was raised in a slave state; the Chesapeake Bay was some places were the

merchants would unload slaves. The slaves would later be disperse in the slave market; where

they would later be distributed among the plantations. Slavery was really heavy in Baltimore

because there were many tobacco plantations and they need the slave labor to farm the tobacco

fields. In Maryland there were really more indentured servants than slaves; it was more like an

agreement between ship masters and people living in poverty in England. In order for the people

living in poor cities to afford to pay for their transportation to America they would agree to be a

servants to the person paying for their transportation for a certain amount of years. Baltimore had

passed an amendment which stated that in order for a slave or servant to be outside the ten miles

the radius of the slave owners houses; they would have to be granted a letter signed by the slave

Owner.
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Benjamin Banneker was a tobacco planter; his mother Mary was the oldest daughter out

Of the Molly’s Brood household. She was the first child out her household to leave the family.

Unlike m...