Francis Williams Excellence Test
London 1928. At the Victoria and Albert Museum there was a very special painting: in the painting there is a black man, with wig and Levite, surrounded by books and scientific instruments. Thus it was catalogued in the Museum: “Unique satirical portrait representing a failed experiment in the education of blacks.”
Later it was discovered that the one in the painting was Francis Williams (1690-1770), a Jamaican scientist, lawyer, art collector and poet. Williams was born a slave, but his family managed to get emancipated and, as a young man, was sent to Cambridge to study. Thanks to his ingenuity and ingenuity, he was proposed in 1716 to enter the prestigious Royal Society. But a commission made up of Isaac Newton and Edmund Halley rejected Williams’ “body” proposal. He meant that he was black.
After his father's death, he returned to Jamaica, where he gained great fame through his scientific work and his efforts for the black community. Among other things, it opened a free school for black children.
Historian and researcher Fara Dabhoiwala at Princeton University has just studied Williams' painting in detail in London. In addition to identifying the author and the date of the painting, he has found relevant information about the scientific achievements of the Jamaican.
This led to the desperation of the whites of Jamaica and those of the international scene. The philosopher David Hume considered Williams a test of white superiority: “They say that there is a black man with talent and scholarship in Jamaica, but they surely admire him for his accomplishments, as a parrot able to say a few clear words.” Edward Long, a historian and advocate of slavery, guessed that they had done an experiment with Williams, “with the right work and enrolled in school and university, to discover that a black man could achieve the ability to read as a white.”
Historian and researcher Fara Dabhoiwala at Princeton University has just studied Williams' painting in detail in London. Besides identifying the author and the date of the painting, he has found very illustrative information about the scientific achievements of the Jamaican. Williams has a book open on the table: This is the Prince of Isaac Newton, who has an open page dedicated to predicting the orbits of comets. In addition, from the window you see part of the sky and Dabhoiwala has identified a small white ball. According to his own words, this ball is the Halley comet, at the time he passed over Jamaica in 1759. Remember that Newton and Halley participated in the commission that had prevented him from entering the Royal Society.
Dabhoiwala believes that the assignment of the painting was made by Williams to reclaim his knowledge in astronomy. The painting proved to be a great astronomer and, although he was not an astrologer, he was able to read the future.
Therefore, Williams was able to accurately guess the trajectory of comet Halley, which was key to making predictions of gravity; at that time a few scientists were able to do those calculations and Newton himself acknowledged that it was very difficult to do so.
Dabhoiwala believes that the assignment of the painting was made by Williams to reclaim his knowledge in astronomy. The painting proved to be a great astronomer and, although he was not an astrologer, he was able to read the future, as he guessed that this painting would help him get the confession he was denied during his life.
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