Equity in Our Founders
A more complete look at Jefferson and a spotlight on Banneker
By Andy Scopp, Seventh Grade Social Studies Teacher
Nearly every seventh grader knows something about Thomas Jefferson even before the school year begins. The Declaration of Independence and Louisiana Purchase are covered in elementary school, and most students can pin him as our third president. They’ve seen his face on money and ride their bikes down streets that bear his name.
Benjamin Banneker, though, is far less famous. Few seventh-grade students know much about him when we arrive at the lesson studying his impact on American society in the Founding Era. In fact, I’ve been teaching American history for thirteen years and hardly knew anything about Banneker for ten of them. I wish I had learned about him sooner because his influence is profound and his story should be widely known.
Not only should Banneker be a household name, but it makes perfect sense to learn about him alongside Jefferson. The two men were contemporaries, and their communication is the bridge between two of my seventh-grade social studies lessons. Students learn about the lives of those enslaved by Thomas Jefferson and then read Banneker’s criticism of Jefferson’s hypocrisy the very next class period.
These two lessons each spring give seventh graders a chance to take an honest look at Thomas Jefferson and to learn about one of the least known, but most influential, individuals in the United States’ Founding Era. While Jefferson is incorporated into several of our lessons in the seventh-grade curriculum, I’d like to focus on one class period that’s dedicated to studying and honoring the lives of those who knew him, not as a statesman or visionary, but as their enslaver.
A More Complete Look a Jefferson
The Slavery at Monticello lesson allows students to research several of the six hundred individuals who were enslaved by Thomas Jefferson over the course of his lifetime. I was inspired to write this lesson in 2019 after visiting Jefferson’s home at Monticello and taking the tour that was explicitly about slavery there. It’s the same tour that Clint Smith recounts in his bestseller, How the Word is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America.
This lesson about slavery at the home of the man who wrote “all men are created equal” is particularly eye-opening for twelve and thirteen-year-olds, and I’ll expand on one powerful moment that happened in class this past spring:
It was towards the end of the class period and students were sharing their work with their classmates. I asked students to read what they wrote for Part Three, which entailed researching individuals on Monticello’s website, to their neighbors. Then, I told students that, on the count of three, they would all say the name of the person that they researched. I counted to three, and then students were asked to say their names.
Hearing a chorus of seventh graders naming individuals whose stories had been largely lost to history, especially in Jefferson’s shadow, was one of the most impactful moments I’ve experienced in the classroom. The students then went around the room and had the opportunity to teach their classmates about Joseph Fosset, Harriet Hemmings, Wormley Hughes, and so many others. Students then considered the weight of how many millions of stories have been forgotten because their enslaver wasn’t famous enough to have his “farm book” saved and then analyzed by historians.
Early on in their academic careers, students should begin to grapple with the complexities of history.
They need to see their historical figures as individuals whose actions had both positive and negative impacts on society, often simultaneously. Acknowledging Jefferson’s flaws allows students to leave the classroom with a more complete understanding of the American story. Acknowledgment is one step, and the next is trying to right the wrong and give people back their humanity that was stolen by an unjust and brutal institution and those who perpetrated it. Trying to counteract the harm caused by Jefferson is one way to dismantle oppression and fill in a historical narrative that has excluded so many for so long.
A Spotlight on Banneker
Another way to combat history’s injustices is to lift up names that have often been relegated to the margins. This past year was the first one where I devoted a lesson to Benjamin Banneker. After students learned about those enslaved at Monticello, they opened the next lesson with a quote from Benjamin Banneker to Thomas Jefferson. In 1791, Banneker wrote to the then Secretary of State,
“…in detaining by fraud and violence so numerous a part of my brethren under groaning captivity and cruel oppression, that you should at the same time be found guilty of that most criminal act, which you professedly detested in others, with respect to yourselves.”
That “numerous a part of [Banneker’s] brethren” was the focus of the previous period’s lesson. Now, students would come to appreciate Benjamin Banneker’s greatness, in almost all cases, for the first time. Banneker (1731–1806) was an inventor, astronomer, and mathematician. He published an almanac that was used by farmers across the country and helped survey the land that became Washington D.C. Beyond his academic prowess, Banneker was an outspoken abolitionist living as a free Black man in the 18th and early 19th Century America south of the Mason-Dixon line. On the day of his funeral, his home was suspiciously burned to the ground, and much of his life’s work was lost.
Seventh graders demonstrated their understanding of Banneker’s accomplishments and historical significance by designing a statue to memorialize him. They considered how Banneker would look, what the pedestal would say, and where it should be located. In just one class period, students came up with a variety of responses. Here’s an excerpt from one of my favorites:
“The plaque would say, Benjamin Banneker was an inspiration to people around the world. He was born free in the United States, but his “brethren” were enslaved. Banneker was interested in math and astronomy from the day he was born. Self-teaching himself in both subjects, he soon became an expert. He was able to predict weather forecasts and based on his knowledge of astronomy and was able to predict when a solar eclipse would happen. He also built a working clock that would chime every hour based on the equations he knew. But the most important thing that Banneker was, was an abolitionist. He spoke out to Jefferson and other people in government about how slavery was immoral. He also brought up an idea to Jefferson that many people had been wondering about. He wrote to him and asked, ‘Sir how pitiable is it to reflect, that altho you were so fully convinced of the benevolence of the Father of mankind, and of his equal and impartial distribution of those rights and privileges which he had conferred upon them, that you should at the Same time counteract his mercies’. He shared the thought of many people from now and from back then questioning why Jefferson would speak up against slavery and then continue to enslave so many. Last but not least, I would put my statue at the entrance to Monticello to remind people of Banneker’s words and importance when they went to visit Jefferson’s home.”
Even if there’s no statue of Banneker at Monticello just yet, the only Black Founder should be brought to the forefront of our history books. He’s spent far too long in the margins. It’s time for students to say the names of those enslaved by the Founders and celebrate the greatness of the group’s least known member, Benjamin Banneker. The Art of Teaching looks different in each and every classroom, but the science of teaching is that our shared history includes so many more stories than those that have traditionally driven the narrative. Those stories, big and small, are exactly what our students need to hear.
Author’s Note: I’d like to thank my friend and former colleague, April Francis-Taylor, for her inspiration in teaching American history through a culturally-responsive lens. A conversation in passing with April was the genesis of the Banneker lesson a few years later. I’m grateful to her and to the community of so many other educators who are working to bring an inclusive, honest, and accurate history to the students in today’s social studies classrooms.
Andy Scopp is a 7th-grade social studies teacher and the social studies department chair at Hommocks Middle School in Mamaroneck, NY. Andy is about to enter his ninth year teaching in Mamaroneck and previously taught for five years at PS175 in the Bronx. He holds a BA in American Studies from Skidmore College and MA in the Teaching of Social Studies from Teachers College, Columbia University. Andy lives in New York City with his wife and their two-year-old son, whose favorite book is the US Constitution for Babies.
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