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"When you do the common things in life in an uncommon way, you will command the attention of the world."
—George Washington Carver
We will explore some of history's most remarkable yet overlooked black polymaths.
Benjamin Banneker was a self-taught African American polymath.
He made a variety of contributions across multiple fields, including:
Banneker constructed America's first striking clock.
He even surveyed Washington D.C.'s boundaries.
He had very limited formal education in 18th century Maryland due to racial prejudice, but he demonstrated exceptional intellectual abilities through his accurate astronomical predictions, published almanacs, and correspondence with Thomas Jefferson—advocating for racial equality.
The escaped slave and polymath Thomas L. Johnson became America's first Black PhD mathematician—breaking racial lines across law, diplomacy, activism, and academia.
He served as both a diplomat under President Harrison and a prominent civil rights leader who met with President Roosevelt.
Later in his life, Johnson dedicated himself to advancing educational and civil rights causes while teaching at Black universities and leading the Colored Convention Movement.
W.E.B. Du Bois was an African American polymath who earned Harvard's first black PhD.
He was skillful in the fields of sociology, history, economics, and literature,
As a scholar, Du Bois pioneered empirical research on black communities.
He's best known for co-founding the NAACP and editing The Crisis magazine.
His most influential works include The Souls of Black Folk and Black Reconstruction in America.
Born into slavery, George Washington Carver became an agricultural scientist who revolutionized Southern agriculture through his groundbreaking research on crop rotation—making it easier to grow hundreds of products from peanuts and sweet potatoes.
His most famous invention was peanut butter.
Carver was famously an educator at Tuskegee Institute—teaching sustainable farming practices and conducting extensive outreach to help improve the lives of rural Southern farmers.
Katherine Johnson was a mathematical prodigy from a young age who broke racial and gender barriers to become one of NASA's most brilliant minds during the Space Race.
Her groundbreaking calculations and analysis were vital to Apollo 11's historic moon landing.
The first African American woman in space, Mae Jemison, was instrumental in NASA's 1992 Space Shuttle Endeavour mission.
She was chosen for the mission due to her background as both a physician and engineer, and she graduated college at age 16!
Neil deGrasse Tyson is a renowned astrophysicist and science communicator.
Degrasse is well regarded as the director of the Hayden Planetarium—conducting significant research on stellar evolution and galactic structure.
You might know him best for making complex astronomical concepts accessible to the general public—via his books, television appearances, and viral speeches.
Today, he is one of the most influential science educators, helping to foster widespread enthusiasm for astronomy and physics.
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