African-Americans at the end of the Civil War craved accep­tance as a peo­ple and this hope was only par­tially rec­i­p­ro­cated. Edu­ca­tion in the late 19th Cen­tury was either a short-lived moment in a person’s life or a multi-year lux­ury that few in the gen­eral pop­u­lace could afford. Whites had an eas­ier path to it, but […]

Latimer’s excel­lent artis­tic flair and draft­ing abil­i­ties at Crosby, Hal­stead and Gould – a patent law firm — advanced him quickly and he found him­self even­tu­ally work­ing for Alexan­der Gra­ham Bell. At Bell’s patent law firm, he was in charge of draft­ing the nec­es­sary draw­ings required to receive a patent for Bell’s tele­phone. After a […]

The rock star of African-American inven­tors of the 19th cen­tury, Woods enjoy great fame dur­ing his life­time. “The most noted Negro inven­tor of the coun­try today is Granville T. Woods, of New York, hav­ing patented more than forty devices, relat­ing to the con­trol of elec­tric­ity. One was sold to Bell Tele­phone for $10,000.”7 After working […]

The three inven­tors of focus didn’t have many advan­tages from life in gen­eral. Cer­tainly not what you would expect from men who went on to be ground­break­ing inven­tors. Two were the chil­dren of escaped slaves, the third of mixed race at a time when this was entirely socially unac­cept­able. How­ever, despite what their par­ents were […]

I fin­ished the paper. Turned out to be good (thanks to Kim’s edit­ing) and my pre­sen­ta­tion went over pretty well and I only stopped once to look down at my notes. After cram­ming to fin­ish this I felt like I’d stud­ied for an exam I knew it so well. You’ll notice super­scripts through­out the posts. Those […]