I have a term paper com­ing up for my Con­tested Images: Race, Reli­gion, and Sci­ence in Amer­i­can class and I thought I’d post the syn­op­sis here. I used to write a lot about his­tor­i­cal top­ics on my site and its been awhile since I last wrote about his­tory. Maybe when I’m done with the paper I’ll update this post and append the actual report (or maybe not, it’ll be about 15 pages long). Any­way, here’s the thumb­nail sketch of it -

The end of the 19th Cen­tury was a tur­bu­lent time for African-Americans. The Civil War, hav­ing just recently con­cluded, was still an open wound in parts of the United States, and the lin­ger­ing feel­ings and racism bled into the Recon­struc­tion period and beyond. Dur­ing this time, a hand­ful of men rose above the dif­fi­cul­ties to cre­ate life-changing inven­tions that would mod­ify the future of entire indus­tries. This paper will focus on the back­grounds, work and inven­tions of three influ­en­tial inven­tors: Lewis Latimer, Eli­jah McCoy and Granville Woods.

Woods’ work in tele­phony and teleg­ra­phy, McCoy’s work in engine lubri­ca­tion and Latimer’s work in the man­u­fac­tur­ing of car­bon fil­a­ments for Edison’s light bulbs made them fore­run­ners in their fields for which they received praise and recog­ni­tion in a time when such adu­la­tion for African-Americans was rare. McCoy’s inven­tion lead users to coin the phrase “the real McCoy”. Latimer’s work was so impor­tant to the field of elec­tric light tech­nol­ogy that he was given one (out of twenty-eight) of the cov­eted spots in the Edi­son Pio­neers, a group that rep­re­sented the high­est honor in the elec­tri­cal field. Woods, known in some cir­cles at the time as the “Black Edi­son”, pio­neered dif­fer­ent uses of teleg­ra­phy, allow­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tion between sta­tion houses and mov­ing trains.

This paper will cover what these inven­tors were famous (and not so famous) for, how their back­grounds as the chil­dren of for­mer slaves impacted their oppor­tu­ni­ties and edu­ca­tions, and how their race played a part in their noto­ri­ety as well as how their inven­tions changed our lives.