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 Many
years ago a child was born into the most abject poverty imaginable.
He and his family literally owned nothing and had no prospects
of ever rising above their degraded condition. What saved
them was the fact that their closest neighbor recognized
in the boy an unusual intelligence and an innate ability
in mathematics. The neighbor trained the boy in what he knew
about civil engineering. When the boy grew up, he and his
mentor became partners in a building business in Georgia.
Together the mentor
and the man built hundreds of bridges, private homes, and
public and commercial buildings. Today the man is most remembered
for the many covered bridges he designed and constructed.
These bridges were vital in developing and linking the small
rural areas of southern Georgia and points west. Each log
used in these bridges was cut by hand, and the timbers were
joined using 5,000 pegs per 100 feet. The man said these
bridges would last a hundred years, and some of them have
lasted longer than that.
 Eventually
the man became an extremely prosperous and renowned engineer/businessman,
as well as an Alabama state representative. When the man
died, hundreds paid their respects, and his obituary told
the story of how he had "risen to prominence by force of
genius and power."
This man was Horace
King. His achievements are all the more remarkable when we
learn that he was born a slave in South Carolina in 1807.
It was his master who recognized his brilliance and eventually
gave him his freedom, thereby allowing King to live a fruitful
and accomplished life and to make an indelible contribution
to society. There is no way to know how many other geniuses
have been have been lost because they were born into poverty
or slavery.
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