Updated: 7:37 AM PST, February 10, 2021
During Black History Month, a look at how Black Americans changed the world and everyday lives, from peanut oil to home security systems.
Many know the history of George Washington Carver and how he changed American farming. Fewer may be familiar with Marie Van Brittan Brown, a nurse who worked long hours and came home alone, late at night to her Queens, New York apartment, and ended up inventing the first home security system.
From changing the world to making everyday life easier, Black scientists and inventors have long imagined, then created, pioneering works, often without recognition or compensation.
9 Everyday Things We Wouldn t Have Today Without These Black Inventors
The first home security system was created by a Black woman in Queens, NY. Feb 8, 2021
The United States is one of the most innovative and technologically advanced countries in the world. You know this already. In fact, you re probably reading this on a smart device while simultaneously using another form of technology (listening to music, riding your Peloton, chatting with Alexa). How’d we get here? Well, it definitely wasn’t by luck. The bright minds, the innovative spirit, and the hard work of the American people paved the way.
(Updated: February 5, 2021)
Bessie Coleman (left) Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain // Shirley Chisholm (center) Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain // Dr. Lonnie Johnson (right) Office of Naval Research Flickr, CC BY 2.0
Whether they were involved in Civil Rights, politics, science, technology, sports, or music, African-American history is full of innovators, though they don t always get their due. Here are 25 unheralded Black pioneers and trailblazers you should know.
1. JESSE L. BROWN
When Jesse LeRoy Brown was a teenager, he wrote a letter to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt to express his disappointment that African Americans weren t flying in the military. While that changed in the Air Force in the early 40s with the Tuskegee Airmen, it would be Brown himself that would break that barrier for the Navy in 1947. By 1949 he was an officer, and in 1950, the United States was at war in Korea and he was in the action. Brown and his unit were soon airborne, completing dangerous mi
Celebrating Black History: Lewis Latimer, inventor and draftsman
Celebrating Black History: Lewis Latimer, inventor By WMC Action News 5 Staff | February 4, 2021 at 12:50 PM CST - Updated February 4 at 12:50 PM
MEMPHIS, Tenn. (WMC) - Lewis Latimer was an American inventor credited with helping to patent the lightbulb and telephone.
After his parents fled slavery, Latimer served in the military before finding an entry-level position at a patent law office.
He would go on to work with Thomas Edison and Alexander Graham Bell, serving an integral role in obtaining patents for the lightbulb and telephone.
Latimer wrote the first book on electrical lighting.
It’s no understatement to say that Black people built this country. The stature of the United States in the world today is, in large part, due to its 246 years of unpaid, enslaved labor, and I believe that remembering what got us to this point is the only way to truly understand what it means to live in this country today.
I must note that some people reading this may have come to the topic of modern Blackness, and therefore, Black history, through the national reckoning that arose last summer to realize the fact that Black lives matter. While the murders of Ahmaud Arbery, George Floyd and Breonna Taylor who now, too, find themselves among the ranks of our nation’s Black history represent an important point of realization for many Americans, they are but a symptom of our collective need to better understand the realities of Black history and thereby Black people.