Analysis Of Benjamin Banneker's Letter To Thomas Jefferson

The year of 1791 was the year American rights became part of the constitution. The Bill of Rights was put into the constitution to protect the rights of Individuals. However, one particular group was left out of the constitution and did not receive those rights. These were the African Americans. Later that year one man decided that this needed to change. Benjamin Banneker, a self-educated free African American wrote a letter to the then Secretary of State, Thomas Jefferson. Throughout Benjamin Banneker’s letter to Thomas Jefferson, he advocates for people of African descent who does not have liberty.
Banneker presents his case in the letter with the fact that even though both him and Thomas Jefferson have some form of liberty, his liberty is barely allowed because of the “prejudice and prepossession” of people of his complexion (“To Thomas Jefferson” 2017). They do not have the same kind of liberty seeing as Banneker, as a free man, liberty and freedom comes with limitations and how African American slaves do not have freedom at all. Banneker then tells Jefferson that he does not need to prove that African Americans are treated bad. He feels that Jefferson already knows that African Americans are treated more like animals then humans who are unable to make mental endowments, which is why they were left out of the …show more content…
Banneker knows that Jefferson sees how terrible African Americans are treated and feels as though he is the best person to write to. He wants Jefferson to convince other leaders to give African Americans liberty. Banneker states many reasons why slaves should be free and even relates the injustices of slavery to the injustices that with the British in order to get Jefferson to look at slavery in a new outlook. Banneker being an African American himself tried to fight for liberty and freedom of African