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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Conder101, post: 386508, member: 66&quot;]Well none of the designs really strike my fancy, but if I had to vote for one of them it would have to be Benjamin Banneker since he is the only one of the three to have any real connection to the city.&nbsp; And even his has been overstated.&nbsp; (When I went to school they said that he was the assistant of the Frenchman (Pierre Charles L&#039;Enfant) who designed the layout of the city of DC and that after he quit, Banneker recreated the plans and did the surveying that laid out all the streets and buildings etc.&nbsp; As it turns out they had submitted what were just about the final drawings to the congress and Banneker did start the surveying but did so for only a couple months in 1791 and had left the DC area before the designer quit in 1792.&nbsp; Then the actual surveying was done by Andrew Ellicott.&nbsp; The crediting of the &quot;saving of the plans&quot; to Banneker was possibly an early example of political correctness because Banneker was a negro of mixed ancestry.)</p><p><br /></p><p>Fredrick Douglass lived in DC for Political reasons for a few years and Duke Ellington live in the city for a year.</p><p><br /></p><p>I also wonder if the fact that all three subjects are negros is designed to appeal to the very high negro population of the current city? ( The city is 58% black compared to about 12% nationally )[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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