Critical Race Theory Shows Black Scientists, Writers Disappeared By White Culture
Critical race theory is spelled Lucy Terry Prince, Jean-Baptiste-Point DuSable ,John Chavis, Jean Baptiste Lislet-Geoffroy, Benjamin Banneker, James Durham, Breffu, Joseph Antonio Emidy, Juana Ramírez, Prince Abdul Rahman Ibrahima Sori, Harriet E. “Hattie” Adams Wilson Phillis Wheatley, Phillis Wheatley Peters, Alexander Lucius Twilight, Judy W. Reed, Mary Eliza Mahoney, Jarena Lee Absalom Jones, Jupiter Hammon, James Derham, Benjamin Banneker and Francis Williams.
The fact that these people of African descent were brilliant groundbreakers in many fields but are unknown to most people is the clearest proof of how the white European culture has ignored and buried the memories of many important persons of African descent, including African Americans.
The denial of the achievements of Black people is part of the critical race theory, a social movement that posits that racism is inherent in many aspects of culture in the United States. It claims that race is a social construct that is used to oppress and exploit people of color.
Francis Williams stands out for the contrast between his brilliance and his virtual absence in many historical records. Among his many discoveries, Williams managed to compute and witness the trajectory of Halley’s comet over Jamaica in 1759. His brilliant, mathematical breakthrough vindicated Edmond Halley’s predictions in 1705 about when the comet would reappear and proved Isaac Newton’s universal theory of motion and gravity for the first time.
The only detailed account of Williams’s life is included in a lengthy biography of Jamaica by the racist Edward Long, a British judge and historian. The tome included 10-pages about Williams and included many lies to discredit Williams.
Long’s three-volume “History of Jamaica” was written in the wake of the Somerset ruling of 1772, which undermined the legality of slaveholding in England. It was largely written to prove that “all black people were inferior to the white race.” Long mentions that Williams had studied at Cambridge but dismissed him as a mediocre student.
Long’s book contains some of the most virulent descriptions of Jamaicans and Africans in general. Long argues that American “Negroes” were characterized by the same “bestial manners, stupidity and vices which debase their brethren” in Africa. He wrote that “this race of people” is distinguishable from the rest of mankind in that they embody “every species of inherent turpitude and imperfection that can be found dispersed among all other races of men.”
Similar racist views were widespread among European writers at the time, including David Hume, a noted Scottish philosopher, historian, economist and essayist and the noted enlightenment philosopher Immanuel Kant.
Williams’ great scientific intellect went unnoted for more than 260 years until this year when Princeton historian and researcher Fara Badhoiwals completed a reevaluation of a 1760 portrait of Williams using scans and x-rays of the portrait. The evaluation depicted various hidden clues about Williams’ observation of Halley’s comet over Jamaica in 1759. His calculations proved the trajectory of Halley’s comet.
Among the revelations, Davhoiwala determined that in the portrait, Williams’s hand is resting on Newton’s “Principia,” open to page 521. The page contains representations of complex calculations about the orbit of comets. Dabhoiwala also established that outside the window is an image of a comet streaking across the sky.
Dabhoiwala determined that the painting is the earliest example in western art of a named Black person celebrating their status as an intellectual.
Racist historical revisionists had long claimed the painting of Williams was satirical in mocking its Black subject for having the audaciousness to pretend to be a Georgian gentleman and scholar.
Williams died in 1762 and during his lifetime, he was arguably the most famous Black person in the 18th century world among educated English-speaking people. He worked with the greatest physicists of the age, including Edmund Halley, who collaborated with Isaac Newton and discovered Halley’s comet. Williams was educated at Cambridge University in England and lived in Jamaica.
After his death, defenders of slavery tried to prove that a brilliant, Black person like Williams could not possibly exist. Williams’ reputation was largely denigrated in 1774, when Long wrote a racist account filled with lies about Williams’s life, ignoring his many brilliant discoveries and theories.
Williams was heralded as a polymath, scholar, astronomer and poet who was one of the most notable free Black people in Jamaica. Born in Kingston, Jamaica into a slaveholding family, Williams travelled to England and became a British subject. After returning to Jamaica, he established a free school for free people of color in Jamaica.
Williams’s parents were both free people of color. The wealth generated by the Williams property enabled Francis Williams to attend college, a rarity for black people in the 18th century.
Williams was made a British subject in 1723. He was allowed to attend scientific meetings of the Royal Society, the United Kingdom’s national academy of sciences. But in 1716, with Isaac Newton and Edmond Halley in attendance, he was denied membership because of his “complection.”
In the 1720s, Williams returned to Jamaica and set up a free school for Black children at a time when free schools were open only to the children of poor whites. Williams taught reading, writing, Latin and mathematics.
In 1724, Williams retaliated after a white planter called him a “black dog.” The planter attacked Williams who fought back in defense. Williams argued his case in court and won a dismissal of the charges against him. The case led to legislation that made it illegal for any Black person in Jamaica to strike a white person, even in self-defense.
Williams also was a noted poet. Among his poems were:
“An Ode to George Haldane” (in reference to Haldane who in 1759 was appointed Governor of Jamaica)
“Rash councils now, with each malignant plan,
Each faction, in that evil hour began,
At your approach are in confusion fled,
Nor while you rule, shall raise their dastard head.
Alike the master and the slave shall see
Their neck reliv’d, the yoke unbound by thee.”
“Welcome, welcome Brother Debtor” (referring to 18th century prisons where debtors were often placed until their debts were paid.)
“What was it made great Alexander
Weep at his unfriendly fate
twas because he cou’d not Wander
beyond the World’s strong Prison Gate
For the World is also bounded
by the heavens and Stars above
Why should We then be confounded
Since there’s nothing free but Jove.”
Williams is among the most acclaimed Black persons to be ignored by the white culture for so many years. Some of the many, many others include:
Lucy Terry Prince
Lucy Terry Prince, who lived from 1732–1821, wrote the first known work of African American literature, the poem “Bars Fight.” Prince was kidnapped in Africa as an infant and sold into slavery in Rhode Island. Around the age of 16, Prince learned of a 1746 Indian ambush of two white families in a section of town known as “the Bars.” It became the subject of her ballad poem “Bars Fight.” She remained enslaved until 1756 when Obijah Prince, a wealthy free Black man, bought her freedom and married her.
Jean-Baptiste-Point DuSable
Jean-Baptiste-Point DuSable was a frontier trader, trapper and farmer who is considered the first resident of what is now Chicago, Ill. DuSable was born in Haiti and traveled with his father to France where he learned French, Spanish, English and many Indian dialects.
DuSable arrived in New Orleans, La., in 1765 and migrated up the Mississippi river, settling in an area near present-day Peoria, Ill. In 1779 DuSable and his wife arrived on the shore of Lake Michigan in a marshy area the Indians called Eschikagu, “the place of bad smells.” He built a home, claimed about 800 acres of land and established a trading post which included a mill, smokehouse, workshop, barn and other smaller buildings. The post became a major supply station for other traders in the Great Lakes region.
Chicago has honored DuSable with a high school, museum, harbor, park and bridge named or renamed after him. The place where he settled at the mouth of the Chicago River is recognized as a National Historical Landmark.
Benjamin Banneker
Benjamin Banneker, a free Black farmer, mathematician, and astronomer, was born on November 9, 1731, the son of freed slaves. Banneker received a brief education from a Quaker schoolmaster and showed an early talent for mathematics and construction. At the age of 21, he built a model of a striking clock, largely out of wood, that became renowned in his neighborhood.
His skills drew him into contact with a wealthy white family, the Ellicotts. In 1788, George Ellicott, an amateur astronomer, lent Banneker books and instruments that enabled him to construct tables predicting the positions of the stars and future solar and lunar eclipses. Three years later, Andrew Ellicott hired Banneker to help him to survey the boundaries of the 10 square mile site of the future federal capital of Washington, D.C. Banneker also became heavily involved in the anti-slavery cause.
James Durham
Dr. James Durham is considered the first African American to be a physician in the United States. Born in 1762, Durham lived and worked most of his early life as an enslaved person, owned by slaveholders who were doctors. Durham’s owner, Dr. John Kearsley, taught the young Durham to read and write in Spanish and French. Kearsley also introduced Durham to medicine by teaching him the principles of pharmacy.
By 1788, Durham had established many prominent connections due to his reputation as a physician and was noted for his treatment of diphtheria cases.
Dr. Benjamin Rush, the most prominent doctor in the U.S., urged Durham to open a practice in Philadelphia. Despite his reputation as an exceptional doctor, Durham’s practice was soon restricted by Pennsylvania regulations established in 1801. The regulations barred anyone from practicing medicine without a formal medical degree.
Breffu
Breffu was an African woman from what is now the nation of Ghana. She was enslaved in the Danish West Indies where she led one of the longest recorded slave revolts in North American history.
Denmark began its involvement in the African slave trade in 1657 and later colonized three West Indies Islands, naming them St. Jan (now St. John), St. Thomas and St. Croix, the Danish West Indies (now the U.S. Virgin Islands).
Under Dutch rule, the islands became the center for sugar cane, cotton, and coffee. Plantations were established, sugar mills were built, and enslaved people were brought from West Africa to provide the labor.
By the beginning of the 18th century, the Danish West India and Guinea Company focused its slave trading operations in and around the city of Accra in what is now Ghana. The Akwamu people of the Akan region had defeated the Accra and enslaved the conquered tribal members before selling them to the Dutch. Eventually the Akwamu were defeated and many enslaved Akwamu people were sold to Danish slave traders and transported to the island of St. John.
Late in 1733, in retaliation for rough treatment and harsh living conditions, enslaved people across the island of St. John fled their plantations and hid in the woods where they planned a revolt.
Breffu led a rebellion, destroying homes and burning crops and taking control of most of St. John Island. The insurrection lasted until early in April 1734 when the French military helped the Danes regain control of the island. In late April, Breffu and 23 followers committed suicide in a ritual ceremony on Brown’s Bay to avoid capture. Breffu is remembered as the “Queen of St. John” and is celebrated annually with a parade and re-enactment of the insurrection.
Mary Eliza Mahoney
After working at the New England Hospital for Women and Children, Mary Eliza Mahoney became the first African American woman to be accepted into nursing school, at the age of 33.
By 1908 she had co-founded the National Association of Colored Graduate Nurses (NACGN) with Ada B. Thorns. She went on to be an active participant in other nursing organizations, along with holding titles as a director. When women gained their voting rights in 1920, Mahoney was the first woman in Boston to register to vote. Several prestigious nursing awards are given in her honor.
Harriet E. “Hattie” Adams Wilson
Born to an African American “hooper of barrels” and a washerwoman of Irish descent, Harriet E. “Hattie” Adams Wilson was raised by her parents until her father died. As a young girl, she was abandoned and bound out as an indentured servant on the farm of Nehemiah Heyward, Jr.
After completing her indenture, she worked as a seamstress and servant. Some of her other occupations were clairvoyant physician, nurse and healer. Wilson is credited with writing the first African American novel published in the U.S., “Our Nig: or Sketches from the Life of a Free Black.” The book was published anonymously in 1859 and rediscovered by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. in 1982.