It's the time of year when my 8th graders learn about Benjamin Banneker, a free man who was known as the African Astronomer, he sent Thomas Jefferson - one of our supposed “great Christian founding fathers” an almanac he had created. Along with the almanac he sent TJ a letter./1

Banneker brilliantly beseeched Jefferson to reconsider his stance on slavery and what true freedom is. Paragraph after rhetorically brilliant paragraph, he laid out his case. Yet Thomas Jefferson replied with only a two paragraph, trite, gaslighting, condescending, response./2

Jefferson never changed his mind continuing to believe that Black people were intellectually inferior.Yet from that same time period, a man named William Cowper wrote a harrowing hymn called "The Negros Complaint" in which he talked about slavery from the perspective of the slave

Calling for justice is not a new trend. My guess is that Thomas Jefferson would have accused William Cowper of being a Woke SJW.
What is the difference bw the two men?
Power. It's intoxicating.
There is nothing new under the sun.
There were racists then & there are racists now

William Cowper struggled with depression to the greatest depths. His life isn't typical of a great successful leader with a profound legacy. But I am somehow encouraged today by his continuous and humble fight for equality while he battled his own demons. Lord give us strength.

Read more about Benjamin Banneker here and how he used his own freedom and advantage to contend and speak up for those without those same blessings. https://www.facinghistory.org/nobigotry/readings/created-equal