Historic Black Inventors - Isiah Waxman

Innovation has always been invariably tied to humanity. We innovate to survive, just as much to live, and that which is used now lays the groundwork for what we’ll be using far from now, creating an inherently exponential model of technological growth. As we’ve fostered eras and generations of technology we have also oppressed and learned to resent those we have societal control over. For the first time in what seems like all world history, we have wised up, working to break down structural and social barriers that have prevented many minority groups from fulfilling their goals or living any semblance of a full life. These specific sorts of problems still exist, of course, on a global scale, and in our hometown. The group dealing with these sorts of dilemmas the U.S. has been made the most distinctly aware of in the past decade or so, must be Black Americans, many of which have had their names scribed in legend despite social and political challenges. Let’s now focus on how this negative aspect of human nature pushed and challenged African Americans and African-Americans to pursue the mentioned other.

George Washington Carver was an agricultural scientist who conceived new methods to slow soil depletion in farming, most prominently cotton. He was also an innovator of the peanut, creating over 300 products from the legume, such as soap, wood, and milk. Carver was born into slavery, taking the last name of his owner, Moses, who bought him after kidnappers took him from his parents. He was taught to read and write by Moses’ wife, and ran away to a different foster family to pursue schooling at age 13, so he lived closer to one of the few schools that would teach him. He graduated in Minneapolis, and after being denied admission to Highland University on the basis of his race when he was initially accepted, he homesteaded some land and started a small farm, and soon after was told of a college that would accept him by an art teacher. He earned a master's there, and quickly started research in mycology and plant pathology. After 2 years, he was invited to be the head of Tuskegee University’s Agriculture Department, where he taught and researched for an astounding forty-seven years, sixty percent of his life. He was, however, resented by white faculty for his education and privileges, being granted a high salary and two personal rooms. Carver is best known for his research on peanuts, which he started experimenting with along with other crops including sweet potatoes and soybeans. He researched them for eight years, and in that time he helped create a thriving peanut economy, particularly in the south where farmers were more abundant, through the creation of hundreds of peanut products. This and his revolutionary studies in agricultural efficiency made him one of the most celebrated scientists of his time. He was born in Missouri, in 1864, and died aged 78 in Alabama.

Bessie Griffin, widely known as Bessie Blount, was a notable physical therapist and inventor, who pioneered methods for people who lost limbs, most notably in war, to perform everyday tasks such as writing and eating. She was born in Chesapeake, in 1914, and attended a schoolhouse for people of color. It was shoddy, and Griffin noted in an interview with The Virginian that it lacked textbooks. Bessie taught herself to write with her left hand as well as her right, as well as use her feet and teeth to hold a pen, after being scolded for writing with her left hand, being told that was ‘improper etiquette’. She was forced to stop her schooling after 6th grade, as there were no higher educational services for black people in the area. After self-teaching herself, she obtained a GED, and obtained a nursing degree at Community Kennedy Memorial Hospital. Bessie became a physical therapist, aiding mainly WW2 veterans with lost limbs, whom she helped perform important tasks they previously couldn’t by teaching them to use feet and teeth to hold things like a spoon or pencil. She’s well known for her inventions, one of which she invented at the Bronx Hospital; it was an electric self-feeding device for those who couldn’t feed themselves, of which the patent she gave away to the French government. Griffin became a forensic scientist in 1969, where she grew acclaim after writing a paper on how a person's handwriting correlates to health. She became a chief examiner in Portsmouth in 1972 until the Metropolitan Police asked Bessie to study forensics in London five years later. Bessie began her own forensic science business at 63, which mainly examined historic slave papers. She operated the business for 20 years. Griffin died 2009, aged 95, and stated in an interview the year she died that she proved “a colored woman can invent something for the benefit of humankind.”