Today’s Black Fact: George Washington Carver George Washington Carver was an American scientist, botanist, educator, and inventor. The exact day and year of his birth are unknown; he was born into slavery in Missouri in January 1864. Carver’s reputation is based on his research into and promotion of alternative crops to cotton, such as peanuts, soybeans and sweet potatoes, which also aided nutrition for farm families. He wanted poor farmers to grow alternative crops both as a source of their own food and as a source of other products to improve their quality of life. The most popular of his 44 practical bulletins for farmers contained 105 food recipes using peanuts. He also developed and promoted about 100 products made from peanuts that were useful for the house and farm, including cosmetics, dyes, paints, plastics, gasoline, and nitroglycerin. He received numerous honors for his work, including the Spingarn Medal of…
Today’s Black Fact: Sara Goode Sara E Goode was an entrepreneur and inventor. She was the very first African American woman to receive a United States patent. Born in 1850, Goode was a slave. When the American Civil War ended she moved to Chicago, Illinois and opened a furniture store. Goode designed the cabinet bed or “fold away bed” which became the predecessor to the hide-away bed. This bed was inclusive of hinges that one could elevate or lower. Remarkably, this invention could also conveniently be used as a roll top desk. While functioning as a desk, the fold away bed included compartments for storing away stationery and writing utensils. Thus, residents could now have space for a bed and desk despite the limited living square footage of their apartments. The “Murphy bed” as we know it today would become the contemporary design of Goode’s invention. When the bed was…
Today’s Black Fact: Garrett Morgan Garrett Augustus Morgan, Sr. was an inventor who invented a type of respiratory protective hood (conceptually similar to modern gas masks and a type of traffic signal. Garrett Morgan patented a safety hood and smoke protector after seeing firefighters struggling from the smoke they encountered in the line of duty and hearing about the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire. His device used a wet sponge to filter out smoke and cool the air. He was able to sell his invention around the country, sometimes using the tactic of having a hired white actor take credit rather than revealing himself as its inventor. Between 1913 and 1921, a number of versions of traffic signaling devices, both mechanical and automated, were patented by various inventors. Of these, only a few saw production or implementation on public roads. Morgan’s device, first patented in 1923, was a hand-cranked, manually operated…
Today’s Black Fact: Madam C.J. Walker Sara Breedlove a.k.a. Madam C.J. Walker was an African-American businesswoman, hair care entrepreneur and philanthropist. She made her fortune by developing and marketing a hugely successful line of beauty and hair products for black women under the company she founded, Madam C.J. Walker Manufacturing Company. Like many women of her era, Sarah experienced hair loss. Because most Americans lacked indoor plumbing, central heating and electricity, they bathed and washed their hair infrequently. The result was scalp disease. Sarah experimented with home remedies and products already on the market until she finally developed her own shampoo and an ointment that contained sulfur to make her scalp healthier for hair growth. At her death she was considered to be the wealthiest African-American woman in America and known to be the first self-made female American millionaire.
Today’s Black Fact: Patricia Bath Patricia Er Bath is an African American and Native American ophthalmologist,inventor and academic. She has broken ground for women and African Americans in a number of areas. Prior to Bath, no woman had served on the staff of the Jules Stein Eye Institute, headed a post-graduate training program in ophthalmologyor been elected to the honorary staff of the UCLA Medical Center (an honor bestowed on her after her retirement). Before Bath, no black person had served as a resident in ophthalmology at New York University and no black woman had ever served on staff as a surgeon at the UCLA Medical Center. Bath is the first African American woman doctor to receive apatent for a medical purpose. In 1981, she conceived of the Laserphaco Probe, a medical device “for ablating and removing cataract lenses”. The device was completed in 1986 after Bath conducted research on…
Today’s Black Fact: Jan Matzeliger Jan Ernst Matzeliger was an African-American inventor in the shoe industry. Matzeliger was born in Paramaribo (then Dutch Guyana, now Suriname). His father was a Dutch engineer and his mother a black Surinamese slave. He had some interest in mechanics in his native country, but his efforts at inventing a shoe-lasting machine began in the United States after a life of working in a machinery shop. He settled in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania at 19 after working as a sailor. By 1877, he spoke adequate English and had moved to Massachusetts. After a while, he went to work in a shoe factory. At the time, no machine could attach the upper part of a shoe to the sole. This had to be done manually by a “hand laster”; a skilled one could produce 50 pairs in a ten-hour day. After five years of work, Matzeliger obtained a…
Today’s Black Fact: Elijah McCoy Elijah J. McCoy was a black Canadian-American inventor and engineer, who was notable for his 57 U.S. patents, most to do with lubrication of steam engines. Born free in Canada, he returned as a five-year-old child with his family to the United States in 1847, where he lived for the rest of his life and became a US citizen. In Michigan, McCoy could find work only as a fireman and oiler at the Michigan Central Railroad. In a home-based machine shop in Ypsilanti, Michigan, McCoy did his own higher skilled work, developing improvements and inventions. He invented an automatic lubricator for oiling the steam engines of locomotives and ships. On July 12, 1872, he obtained his first patent, “Improvement in Lubricators for Steam-Engines.” The saying the real McCoy’, meaning the real thing, has been associated with Elijah McCoy’s invention of an oil-drip cup, for which…
Today’s Black Fact: Muhammad Ali Cassius Marcellus Clay, Jr. is an American former professional boxer, philanthropist and social activist. Considered a cultural icon, Ali was both idolized and vilified. Ali changed his name after joining the Nation of Islam in 1964, subsequently converting to Sunni Islam in 1975, and more recently practicing Sufism. In 1967, three years after Ali had won the World Heavyweight Championship, he was publicly vilified for his refusal to be conscripted into the U.S. military, based on his religious beliefs and opposition to the Vietnam War. Nicknamed “The Greatest,” during his prime Ali was involved in several historic boxing matches. Notable among these were three with rival Joe Frazier, which are considered among the greatest in boxing history, and one with George Foreman, where he finally regained his stripped titles seven years later. Ali was well known for his unorthodox fighting style, which he described as…