Inventors, African American

Source:

 Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience, Second Edition

Inventors, African American

Creators of innovative devices and processes in areas such as agriculture, railroads, and space technology.

The history of African American inventors reflects the broad history of American technology, as well as the unique circumstances of blacks in the United States. It remains a challenge to historians to discover all of the different areas in which individual black inventors have contributed to emerging technology, for often such contributions went largely unremarked and unrecorded. The enactment of the first U.S. patent law in 1790 provides some records of early black inventors and their inventions, but this documentation is incomplete.

Although free black inventors were legally able to receive letters of patent before the American Civil War (1861–1865), very few actually received them. Slaves who invented new devices were legally prohibited from receiving patents, and in instances where slave inventions were noted, the names of the slaves often went unrecorded. The end of slavery in 1865 brought more recognition to black inventors, and after the Civil War significant numbers of black inventors began to patent their inventions. Their inventions were touted in expositions and fairs, in black newspapers, and by political leaders. They not only served as a great source of racial pride but also helped discredit theories of black inferiority.

Antebellum Inventors

The first African American believed to have received a patent for an invention was Thomas L. Jennings, a free black who owned a tailoring and dry-cleaning business in New York City. He received a patent for his dry-cleaning process on March 3, 1821. Other early free black inventors included Henry Blair, a farmer in Maryland who invented a corn planter in 1834 and a cotton planter in 1836; and George Peake, an adventurer and frontiersman who, after settling in Ohio in 1809, invented a stone hand mill that produced a finer meal with less effort. Two maritime inventors were James Forten and Lewis Temple. Forten, a veteran of the American Revolution (1775–1783), abolitionist, and owner of a Philadelphia sailmaking business, invented a sail-handling device that was extremely profitable for him. Temple revolutionized the New England whaling industry with his introduction of the toggle harpoon, which held much more securely in the whale's flesh than did previous harpoons, but he never patented his invention and died a poor man. Henry Boyd was a former slave who bought his own freedom and then made his way in 1826 from Kentucky to Ohio, where he became a prominent manufacturer of uniquely constructed bedsteads. (Today Boyd beds are valuable and sought-after items among antique collectors in the Ohio area.) Martin R. Delany, the abolitionist, author, and advocate of African American emigration to Africa, was an inventor as well. His frustration in obtaining a patent for a railroad locomotive device was said to have influenced his desire to leave the United States. The most renowned pre-Civil War black inventor was Norbert Rillieux, the Louisiana genius who, among other accomplishments, patented his “multiple-effect vacuum evaporation system” in 1843. This invention revolutionized Sugar production and came to be the accepted method for evaporating sugarcane juice.

The stories of two different slaves offer insight into the situation of the slave inventor. Oscar J. E. Stuart, a prominent Mississippi planter and the owner of “Ned,” a slave mechanic, wrote to the U.S. secretary of the interior in 1857 seeking a patent for a cotton scraper that Ned had invented. He wanted the patent issued in his name, however, as he argued that he, as Ned's owner, was “the owner of the fruits of the labor of the slave both intilectual [sic] and manual.” The commissioner of patents refused to grant the patent, however. When Stuart challenged this decision, the attorney general concurred, stating that slaves were not citizens and therefore neither they, nor their masters, could receive U.S. patents for their inventions. This decision stood until the end of the Civil War. Another Mississippi slave inventor was Benjamin Montgomery, who was a slave mechanic and general manager of the Hurricane plantation of Joseph Davis, the brother of Jefferson Davis, who became president of the Confederacy. In the 1850s Montgomery invented a slanted propeller for steamboats that allowed them to operate more effectively in shallow waters. Both Joseph and Jefferson Davis were rebuffed in their efforts to obtain a patent due to the earlier Patent Office decision concerning Ned's invention. Jefferson Davis later oversaw Confederate legislation that allowed slave owners to receive patents for their slaves' inventions. The slave inventor Ned disappeared from documented history, but the Stuart family went on to become successful manufacturers of his cotton scraper. After the Civil War, Montgomery became a prominent businessman and purchased the Hurricane plantation from Davis, his former master. His son, Isaiah Montgomery, became a founder of the all-black town of Mound Bayou, Mississippi.

Late Nineteenth Century

The end of the Civil War and the general optimism of the Reconstruction period (1865–1877) brought about a spurt of applications by black inventors to the U.S. Patent Office. Many of those seeking protection for their inventions were ex-slaves. The kinds of inventions patented by blacks after the war reveal the occupations to which they were largely confined: agricultural implements, devices for easing domestic chores, musical instruments, and improvements related to the railroad industry were common subjects for black inventors. For example, Peter Campbell, who had been a slave on Davis's plantation along with Montgomery, invented a screw press (and patented it himself) in 1879. Charles Christmas, another ex-slave, patented a cotton press in 1880. Some African Americans patented inventions that they developed in the course of operating their own businesses: barber shops, catering businesses, dry goods stores, mechanical repair shops, blacksmiths, restaurants, and tailoring shops. Henry Bowman, of Worcester, Massachusetts, patented a flag-making process that he used to develop his flag business. A. P. Ashbourne, a California merchant, received patents related to food processing in the 1870s. Other nineteenth-century inventors included Joseph Lee, a Boston caterer and restaurant owner, who invented a bread-making machine and a bread-crumbing machine; Frank Ferrell, a New York machinist and Knights of Labor organizer, who patented several mechanical valves; and Joseph H. Dickinson, who patented improved reed organs in the 1890s.

The best known black inventors of the late nineteenth century were George Washington Carver, Jan Matzeliger, and Elijah McCoy. Arriving at Tuskegee Institute (now Tuskegee University) in Alabama in 1896, Carver received acclaim for his innovative work there with agricultural products, particularly the peanut, the sweet potato, and the cowpea. He made more than 500 different kinds of products from the peanut and about 120 from the sweet potato. Carver was also one of the first people in that era to promote the use of organic fertilizer.

Matzeliger invented a shoe-lasting machine that made the skill of shoe lasting by hand (the shaping of a shoe around a foot-sized form) obsolete. He emigrated to Lynn, Massachusetts, the center of the shoe industry, from Suriname. Matzeliger studied the problem of shoe lasting for years, and by the time that he was able to produce a working model of his invention, he was suffering financially and physically from his devotion to his work. Matzeliger was so desperate for funds to complete construction of his demonstration model, test its performance, and apply for the patent, that he sold two-thirds of the rights to two local investors. Matzeliger received his patent in 1883, and the trial run of the first Matzeliger lasting machine was a success, lasting seventy-five pairs of shoes. Matzeliger continued to refine his ideas and produced two more lasting machines that were improvements on his first machine.

McCoy, a locomotive fireman for the Michigan Central Railroad, was the most prolific of the nineteenth-century black inventors. In 1872 he patented the first of his automatic lubrication devices to be used on stationary steam engines. The money that McCoy received for this patent he put toward further studies of the problems of lubrication. In 1873 McCoy patented an improved lubricator, and he went on to develop over fifty improvements in lubricators for both stationary and locomotive engines. Many railroad and shipping companies adopted McCoy's lubricators, and he became an instructor, and later a consultant, in the proper fitting and use of his devices. Many other kinds of lubricators were patented, but none could stand up to the standard of McCoy's.

Two inventors in the burgeoning field of electricity were Granville Woods and Lewis Latimer. Woods established the Woods Electric Company in Cincinnati, Ohio, in the 1880s to research, manufacture, and market his electrical inventions. He primarily designed and patented electrical systems, concentrating on railway telegraphy and on railway electrical systems. In 1890 Woods moved to New York City, where he patented many inventions used in the development of the streetcar system there. Latimer patented an improved method for developing filaments for light bulbs in the 1880s. He worked for American inventor Hiram Maxim as well as for Maxim's rival inventor, Thomas Edison, whom he served as a master patent draftsman and legal consultant for patents. Latimer also authored a book on incandescent lighting.

Several patents have been recorded for black women in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Few women were included in a list of over 500 black inventors compiled shortly after the turn of the century, but women may have been less likely to pursue patents in their own names for their inventions. Julia Hammonds received a patent in 1896 for a device to hold yarn while knitting, and Sarah E. Goode patented a folding cabinet in 1885. Henrietta Bradberry patented a clothes rack in 1943 and an underwater torpedo device in 1945. Mary Kenner received at least five patents for domestic devices from 1956 to 1987.

Twentieth Century

The Great Migration of African Americans from the rural South to Northern cities in the early twentieth century created new markets for imaginative black inventors. Madame C. J. Walker, who supported herself as a laundress, devised different formulas for an array of grooming products and cosmetics that she marketed to these new urban black communities. She developed such an effective system for the national distribution of these products that she was labeled America's first self-made woman millionaire. Her Walker salons also provided employment opportunities for hundreds of black women at a time when few positions other than domestic work were available to them.

Inventor Garrett Morgan from Cleveland, Ohio, provides a heroic model of the early-twentieth-century black inventor. When Morgan heard news of an underground explosion that had killed workers and almost all of two rescue teams sent in after them, he donned his “safety hood” and went in to save them. He had patented his safety hood, a precursor to a modern gas mask, two years earlier, in 1914. In 1923 Morgan patented another safety invention, a three-way traffic signal for automobiles that introduced the caution signal, which he marketed through his company, the G. A. Morgan Safety System.

By the beginning of the twentieth century, the profile of the successful inventor began to change. Many inventors were forced to become entrepreneurs, spending as much time on marketing, promoting, and defending their inventions as they did on creating them. Many of the most important inventions came from corporations with centralized research departments, and advanced degrees in engineering and science were often required for inventors to contribute to highly complex technologies. Until the breakthroughs in civil rights of the 1950s and 1960s, blacks found gaining access to advanced graduate training and obtaining research positions in these corporations difficult.

Despite these restrictions, black inventors continued to innovate. The inventions of mechanical genius Frederick Jones were wide-ranging; he received over sixty patents. In the 1920s and 1930s Jones designed devices for movie theaters, including a method of adapting silent movie projectors for sound film, and also made important contributions that revolutionized the refrigerated shipping industry. Percy L. Julian was initially refused a graduate fellowship because of his race, but he went on to receive advanced degrees in chemistry from Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and the University of Vienna in Austria. By the time of his retirement in the 1960s, he had received over 130 chemical patents, the most significant of which aided the synthesis of the common drug cortisone.

African American inventors continue to contribute to emerging technologies, and inventors such as Clarence Elder, who received at least twelve patents in the field of electronics by 1969; Meredith Gourdine, who patented dozens of environmentally safe, energy-related devices from the 1970s until his death in 1998; and Christine Darden and George Carruthers, both researchers at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), have carried on the legacy of Jennings and other early black inventors.

See also Cotton Production in the United States; Hair and Beauty Culture; Slavery in the United States.

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