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Preface: “The Substance of Things Hoped For, the Evidence of Things Not Seen”
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ix Preface “The Substance of Things Hoped For, the Evidence of Things Not Seen” Thomas Fuller, known as the Virginia Calculator, was stolen from his native Africa at the age of fourteen. . . . When he was about seventy years old, two gentlemen . . , having heard . . . of his extraordinary powers of arithmetic, sent for him and had their curiosity sufficiently gratified by the answers which he gave. . . . In 1789 he died at the age of 80 years, having never learned to read or write, in spite of his extraordinary power of calculation. —E. W. Scripture, Arithmetical Prodigies (1891, p. 3) Thomas Fuller’s (1709–1789) largely unknown life stands as an unfortunate record of limits placed on a potential mathematical genius. But for his birth into a free American family, the mathematical contributions of the better-known Benjamin Banneker (1731–1806), also of African descent, would similarly be lost to history. Fuller’s anonymity and Banneker’s relative fame stand as a commentary on the obstacles and opportunities that have circumscribed Black American mathematical talent across three centuries. These two men—Fuller and Banneker—are the first recognized mathematical personages in the United States of African descent. It is practically impossible to name another U.S.-born Black mathematician until Elbert Frank Cox, who was the first Black person to earn his doctorate in mathematics in the United States, in 1925 (from Cornell University). It took nearly 20 years after Cox’s achievement before the first African American woman, Euphemia Lofton Haynes, earned her doctorate in mathematics, in 1943, from Catholic University. The obstacles that Banneker, Fuller, and others faced in demonstrating their mathematical potential and talent centered primarily around the x Preface second-class status ascribed to them in the United States due to their racial heritage. But there was opportunity as well, even within the rigid confines of the segregated era. At times, opportunity was crafted and cultivated so that they could surmount obstacles that had nothing to do with merit but everything to do with race. Sometimes opportunity, fleeting and astonishingly present, was seized—a matter of being in the right place at the right time. What may be surprising about the Black mathematicians’ narratives shared in this book is that many of the elements in Fuller’s and Banneker’s 18th-century mathematical lives—talent unrecognized and sometimes unrewarded , as well as the sometimes startling and serendipitous nature of opportunity —resonate throughout the lives of contemporary Black mathematicians , young and old. History—the lived experiences of Black Americans in the United States as slaves, as free persons, as second-class and finally equal citizens under the law—plays an indelible role in shaping the experiences of Black mathematicians. This shared history and how it manifests itself in the formative, educational, and professional experiences of Black mathematicians is reflected in how they come to do and practice mathematics (Walker, 2009, 2011). This is not to say that the mathematics in which Black mathematicians engage is a special kind of mathematics unique to their ethnic heritage but rather that for many, how they conceptualize their professional identities and communities is in large part based on their experiences of being both Black and mathematically talented. When told of this project exploring the experiences of Black mathematicians , defined for this book as those who have earned their PhDs in a mathematical science, a colleague in educational research asked “Are there any?” That this question can be asked with some sincerity begins to suggest the very real racialized space(s) that Black mathematicians occupy in a supposedly color-blind discipline and perhaps explains why Benjamin Banneker was compelled more than two centuries ago in 1791 to write Thomas Jefferson a letter exhorting him, at length, to do what he could to ameliorate the stereotypes about African Americans’ intellectual capacity1 : I apprehend you will readily embrace every opportunity to eradicate that train of absurd and false ideas and opinions which so generally prevail with respect to us. (Bedini, 1999, p. 158) Banneker’s appeal to Jefferson to use his authority and power to combat the (mis)representations of African Americans’ intellectual ability finds a [52.23.201.145] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 11:50 GMT) Preface xi counterpoint two centuries later in the writings of the 10th Black American to earn his PhD in mathematics, Wade Ellis, Sr.: As a people, we have had more than our share of the academically hereditary disaffection all peoples seem to experience relative to mathematics. . . . Nowadays our promising...