Mélange - The Sensational Six

There is a significant amount of misinformation on the internet regarding which Black inventor or innovator developed which devices. To counter that, I present the following list of people of African descent whose contributions greatly changed America.

George Carver (early 1860s – January 5, 1943)

George Carver was a groundbreaking scientist born into American slavery sometime between 1861 and 1865 in the slave state of Mississippi. Like many—if not most—Black Americans with a family heritage rooted in the former Confederacy, his last name, Carver, was the surname of the family that owned him and his family. Unfortunately, George Carver's father died before he was born, and slave thieves stole and later resold his mother when he was a child. As a result, the family that counted him as their property became his caregivers.

After the conclusion of the Civil War, young George Carver found educational opportunities miles from the Carver home, courtesy of a distant school for Blacks. Later, he pursued a college education and earned a master's degree in botany in 1896 from the school now called Iowa State University. That same year, George Carver accepted Booker T. Washington's invitation to join the staff of Tuskegee University, and from 1896 until the day he passed, he remained Tuskegee's most honored educator and scientist despite never pursuing a doctorate. However, out of respect for the man and his achievements, his name is typically prefaced with the word "Doctor."

While at Tuskegee, George Carver indulged and expanded his interest in leveraging plants—especially the peanut plant—in new ways. Using them, not metals or lumber, he developed processes for making hundreds of consumer and industrial products, including bleach, paper, pens, ink, and bulletproof vests (against the calibers of the time). Due to his popular association with peanuts, George Carver is often linked to the invention of peanut butter. However, peanut butter was not one of the many products he created. For that list, see the Macon Progress website embedded below.

In addition to his unprecedented work with peanuts, George Carver made scientific advances by leveraging sweet potatoes and soybeans. Additionally, he created new farming techniques to restore war-ravaged and nutrient-depleted Southern farmlands, thus assisting the economy of the South.

Dr. Charles Drew (June 3, 1904 – April 1, 1950)

Dr. Charles Drew pioneered the reduction of human blood to plasma and its storage in what are now widely known as blood banks. His system for storing blood plasma revolutionized the medical profession and greatly enhanced the blood supply. Dr. Drew also established the American Red Cross blood bank, of which he was its first director. He also helped organize the world's first blood bank drive, "Blood for Britain," during World War II.

In 1950, Dr. Drew passed away following a violent automobile accident. His death ushered in urban myths that the doctor passed away due to either the refusal of a hospital to accept him because of his race or the hospital refused to administer a potentially life-saving blood transfusion, again due to his race. In truth, Dr. Charles Drew did receive emergency care at a hospital, but his injuries were too severe for him to survive.

Elijah McCoy (May 2, 1844 – October 10, 1929)

Born to escaped American slaves who fled Kentucky and found refuge in Canada via the Underground Railroad, inventor Elijah McCoy's signature creation advanced the causes of worker safety and machine efficiency on America's railroads. McCoy's work was often poorly copied by others, a situation that caused railroads to order the "Real McCoy" specifically.

Today, with the world more familiar with Star Trek's Doctor Leonard "Bones" McCoy than anyone or anything else named "McCoy," the question of what the "Real McCoy" was and why it was greatly desired now exists. The answer is this: the “Real McCoy,” as the term applied to railroads, was an "oil drip cup" that automatically applied lubrication to railroad machinery.

Before Elijah McCoy invented the device in 1872, machines had to be shut down, opened or partially disassembled, and lubricant applied to parts by hand. A search of the United States Patent and Trademark Office website shows McCoy patented at least 24 devices, including various other lubricators, a gauge, and a buggy top.

Garrett Morgan (March 4, 1877 – July 27, 1963 )

Garrett Morgan was a Cleveland-based inventor and businessman who invented a device called the "Morgan safety hood and smoke protector," for which he received a patent. In 1916, an explosion occurred in a tunnel deep beneath Lake Erie, and several workmen became trapped in suffocating clouds of dust and smoke. Morgan and a team of volunteers donned his new safety hoods and rescued the imperiled workers, thus proving the hood's effectiveness.

While the above may give the impression that Morgan’s invention was a gas mask, it was not. Although Morgan later added air filters to his invention, his hood was designed to draw in the low-lying fresh air often found during fires and other emergencies that deplete oxygen. However, it did not protect its wearers from toxic gases. Accordingly, while Morgan’s invention was an advancement in emergency response apparatus, it was not a true gas mask. Please see the following patent application for diagrams and descriptions of the Morgan safety hood.

GAMorganHood.pdf

As seen in the patent application below, Morgan also invented a crank-operated, three-position traffic signal with “STOP” and “GO” placards that alternated traffic and directed motorists to proceed, use caution, or stop. Morgan’s 1923 diagram clearly shows the use of placards, not lights; it also shows the signal as a manually operated device. The three-placard idea, which Morgan and others employed, lives on today as the “Red-Yellow-Green" lights on modern traffic lights.

GAMorganSignal.pdf

Dr. Daniel Williams (January 18, 1856 – August 4, 1931)

Dr. Daniel Williams earned his doctorate from what is now the Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine. He performed one of the first, and likely the first, surgical repair of a damaged pericardial sac. The pericardial sac surrounds the human heart and protects it from harm and disease, among other functions. Although some sources claim the first successful pericardium surgery occurred two years prior, most point to Dr. Williams’ groundbreaking work in 1893.

Other extraordinary firsts by Dr. Williams include the founding of Provident Hospital and Training School in Cook County, Illinois, in 1891. Dr. Williams saw a need for Blacks to receive thorough medical training of the kind they were often denied, so with the support of Chicago’s White and Black communities, he opened the site as a teaching hospital run by African-Americans and open to all. Years later, Dr. Williams became a charter member of the American College of Surgeons, a professional organization of surgeons dedicated to maintaining medical standards for surgeons.

Granville Woods (1853 or 1856 –January 30, 1910)

Born in Colombus, Ohio, or somewhere in Australia, engineer and inventor Granville T. Woods used his sizable intellect to create numerous electrical and mechanical devices for railroads and trolleys.

Called the "Black Edison" later in life, Woods was a longtime worker in the railroad industry who progressed from working as a mere crewmember on steam engines to finding employment as a true railroad engineer. Woods had a thirst for knowledge, and he also absorbed as much knowledge as possible by trying to attend various schools and institutions of higher learning. However, the needs of his impoverished family and possibly other circumstances forced him to abandon his quest for a formal education. Undeterred, Woods taught himself electrical and mechanical engineering, mastering both.

Although a search of the United States Patent and Trademark Office website readily shows the prolific Granville Woods had no fewer than 24 patents, he is frequently credited with more than 60. Below is a list of his patents from the Brooklyn Historic Railway Association.

Most of Woods' inventions concerned safety and electrical functions, which brought him into legal conflict with Thomas Edison and other competing inventors. Due to paying numerous legal fees to defend his patents against those who tried to usurp his ownership of his many patents, Granville Woods eventually passed away an impoverished and frustrated man.

Certain names are inseparable from America's history of ingenuity. Names such as Ford, Bell, Morse, Salk, and Edison are commonly known as belonging to several of America's brightest lights. However, many relatively unknown others also catalyzed America's march toward greatness. I hope the above list of notables proves informative and reveals the genius of some of the nation's largely forgotten architects of change.

-TR