6 Black Savants Who Will Amaze You

Genius comes in many forms. If you look around you can find people with extraordinary intellects and abilities in every community. Here are a few Black people from around the world who possess skills and abilities above and beyond the average person. 1. Stephen Wiltshire A British artist of West Indian descent, Wiltshire is known for his ability to draw detailed cityscapes completely from memory. Several of his most famous drawings of the New York City and Tokyo skylines, were done after only 20 minutes of viewing the cities from a helicopter. At the age of 3, Wiltshire was diagnosed as autistic, and spent the first few years of his life at Queensmill School in London. It was here that his amazing artistic abilities were discovered and teachers used his love for drawing to help him better relate to the world around him. 2. Orlando Serrell After a brain injury caused when he was struck by a baseball on the left side of his head, Orlando Serrell of Virginia became what is known as an “acquired savant.” In his case, he gained extraordinary memory abilities that were not present before the accident. Since that day in 1979 when he was just 10 years old, Serrell can remember the day of the week, weather, and details of his actions and whereabouts for any given day. Recent studies have shown that his ability to remember this information for days before the accident has also been positively affected, though it’s not quite at total recall. Because of his abilities, and the unique way he came about them, Serrell has participated in numerous studies aimed at figuring out less painful ways to unlock similar abilities in the average person. Alonzo Clemons creating a sculpture of a horse. 3. Alonzo Clemons Artist Alonzo Clemons of Boulder, Colo., also suffered an accident as a child. Unfortunately, his brain injury left him with major developmental disabilities. It also left him with an amazing skill for sculpting. Clemons has a particular talent for sculpting animals, and create clay sculptures very quickly and in amazing detail. These sculptures are often done from memory alone after seeing only an image of an animal, even those unfamiliar to him. 4. "Blind" Tom Wiggins Thomas Wiggins was born into slavery on a Georgia plantation in 1848. Because he was born blind, and autistic he was allowed to roam freely on the plantation, rather than forced to work. Aided by the children of the house, Tom frequently broke into the big house to play the piano. His skill with the instrument was so amazing that he was allowed not only to continue this practice, but to take lessons, and live in a small room at adjacent to the main house. Wiggins was also known for his able memory and skills of mimicry. He was not only able to memorize and play back complex musical pieces, but to imitate animal sounds, and entire conversations of the people around him. It is estimated that Gen. James Bethune, who held Wiggins in bondage, made the equivalent of $5 million by touring him around the world. Wiggins himself only received a small stipend of $20 a week for his efforts, which sometimes included as many as four shows per day. Thomas Fuller Thomas Fuller, an African sold into slavery in 1724 at the age of 14, was sometimes known as the “Virginia Calculator” for his extraordinary ability to solve complex math problems in his head. Rumors circulated that he was a savant, since he could not read or write, but that was not uncommon among slaves at the time. Some believed that he may have gained his skills with math in his homeland in Africa. His case was often cited by abolitionists of the time as proof that Blacks were in no way mentally inferior to whites. Eugene Hoskins Hoskins was an autistic man who lived in Oxford, Miss., in the 1920s, who was purported to have an extraordinary ability to memorize dates and an obsession with trains - particularly train engine numbers. He was studied in depth by Hiram Byrd, who was at the time a professor of hygiene at the University of Mississippi. Though Byrd never made a diagnosis of autism -- it was not understood as a disorder until the 1940s -- the professor left enough information about Hoskins’ behavior that it is clear now that this was the case. Hoskins lived in Oxford around the same time as American author William Faulkner, and it is speculated that he may have been part of the inspiration for the cognitively disabled character, Benjamin “Benjy” Compson, in the classic Faulkner novel, "The Sound and The Fury." Sources: http://www.math.buffalo.edu/ http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/ http://www.blindtom.org/ http://archives.columbusstate.edu http://alonzoclemons.com https://www.wisconsinmedicalsociety.org http://www.orlandoserrell.com/ http://www.smh.com.au http://www.stephenwiltshire.co.uk/ https://www.youtube.com http://www.slate.com http://leftbrainrightbrain.co.uk

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