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Benjamin Banneker and Us

Eleven Generations of an American Family

Format: Hardback
£23.99

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In 1791, Thomas Jefferson hired a Black man to help survey Washington, DC. That man was Benjamin Banneker, an African American mathematician, a writer of almanacs, and one of the greatest astronomers of his generation. Banneker then wrote what would become a famous letter to Jefferson, imploring the new president to examine his hypocrisy, as someone who claimed to love liberty yet was an enslaver. More than two centuries later, Rachel Jamison Webster, an ostensibly white woman, learns that this groundbreaking Black forefather is also her distant relative.Acting as a storyteller, Webster draws on oral history and conversations with her DNA cousins to imagine the lives of their shared ancestors across eleven generations, among them Banneker’s grandparents, an interracial couple who broke the law to marry when America was still a conglomerate of colonies under British rule. These stories shed light on the legal construction of race and display the brilliance and resistance of early African Americans in the face of increasingly unjust laws, some of which are still in effect in the present day.
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Authors:
Webster, Rachel Jamison
Year Published:
2023
Country of Publication:
United States
Format:
Hardback
ISBN:
9781250827302
Number of Pages:
368
Publication Date:
20/02/2023
Publisher:
Henry Holt & Company Inc
Illustrations Note:
1 8-pg. 1/c insert
Place of Publication:
New York
Language:
English
SKU:
9781250827302

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