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Indeed, Jefferson deemed the African-American poet Phillis Wheatley’s work “beneath the dignity of criticism” and asserted that Black astronomer Benjamin Banneker possessed only “a mind of very common stature.”

The curfew will be only be applied in designated areas around the District: Chinatown; Navy Yard; the U Street corridor in Northwest; Howard University and Banneker Recreation Center; 14th Street NW between Otis Place and Spring Road; the 4000 block of Georgia Avenue NW; between the 4400 and 4600 block of Benning Road SE and the 1300 block of Congress Street SE.

From scientist Benjamin Banneker’s 1796 Almanac to a 2006 quilted portrait of a Black female fieldworker by textile artist Bisa Butler, there’s a trove of art and artifacts that speak to the strength, resilience, ingenuity and creativity of African Americans dating back to before the nation’s birth.

Perhaps most famously, Banneker challenged Thomas Jefferson by letter for his hypocrisy in asserting, in the Declaration of Independence, that “all men are created equal” while also being an enslaver who held that Black people were inferior.

Banneker’s grandparents were said to have been an Englishwoman named Molly, who was a White indentured servant, and an enslaved Wolof man from Senegambia named Bana’ka.