Benjamin Banneker is credited with being America's first black scientist. A native of Ellicott's Lower Mills, Maryland, he was born the first of three children November 9, 1731, to Robert, a slave from Guinea, West Africa, and his free wife Mary Banneky, of English-African descent. Benjamin's grandfather, Banneka, was an African prince; his grandmother, Molly Welsh Banneker, was an indentured servant who read and discussed the Bible with him. His father purchased his own freedom. The family lived ten miles from Baltimore on a 120-acre farm which Benjamin inherited following his father's death in 1757.

Despite having to work hard to support his family, Banneker received eight years of schooling from a Quaker teacher at an integrated private academy. He read borrowed books by Addison, Pope, Shakespeare, Milton, and Dryden, studied the stars, and created and solved math puzzles as entertainment and a means of self-education. He owned no books until...