Note: The following list is not comprehensive and is on-going. It does include many inventions that are in use today, especially by youth. Photos of the inventors and their inventions were on display in Henry High School from March 2020 until early 2022. They were posted on Henry’s Facebook page daily throughout February of 2022, and are archived in picture and words on the Henry High School website in a file titled African American Inventors.
Leisure
Issac Johnson – foldable bicycle frame; Lonnie Johnson – supersoaker; George F. Grant – wooden golf tee; Gerald A. Lawson – modern home-video gaming console and video game cartridge.
Technology
Mark Dean – P.C.; Jesse Eugene Russell – digital cell phone; Henry T. Sampson – gamma electric cell; Dr. Shirley Jackson – touch-tone telephone with caller ID and call waiting; James E. West – electric microphone; George Carruthers – far-ultraviolet camera and spectrograph; Alexander Miles – automatic doors for elevators; Marc Hannah – special effects with 3-D glasses such as to view Jurassic Park movie; Dr. Joseph N. Jackson – remote control; John Henry Thompson – lingo programming; Gladys West – partner in founding GPS.
In the Home
Sarah Boone – ironing board; Madame C. J. Breedlove Walker – hair products, heating comb; Jan Metzelinger – shoe making machine; Lewis Latimer – carbon filament light bulb; Thomas Jennings – dry cleaning; Sisters Mildred Davidson Smith and Mary Beatrice Davidson Kenner – toilet tissue holder, etc.
Safety
Betty Harris – test for identifying explosives in a field; T. J. Martin – fire extinguisher improvement (see also Percy Julian in Health category); Marie Van Brittan and Albert Brown – closed circuit television home security system.
Foods
Frederick McKinley Jones – automatic refrigerator system for trucks; George Crum – potato chips; George Washington Carver – numerous items from peanuts; Norbert Rillieux – white sugar.
Travel
Elijah McCoy (Canada) – inventions for trains; Garrett Morgan – traffic signal (red, yellow and green); Phillip Downing – street letter box; Katherine Johnson – calculations for space flight.
Health
Charles Drew – blood bank with blood plasma; Dr. Patricia Bath – cataract surgery procedures; George E. Alcorn –imaging x-ray spectrometer; Percy L. Julian – physostigmine or cortisone for glaucoma, and fire extinguisher foam; Jane Wright – cancer treatment.
Systematic racism has prevented the acknowledgement of untold numbers of inventions of African Americans. Prior to emancipation, white slave owners often received credit for inventions of enslaved people. The U.S. Patent system was not available then to enslaved people as only U.S. citizens could get a patent — and African Americans were not considered U.S. citizens, let alone human. Another obstacle has been that centuries of slave money has built corporations with power to control the legal and patent system. Herein, in this salute to Black Inventors from Henry High School, we open the doors and windows to the innovations and ingenuity of African Americans.
Recommended on YouTube: A History of Racism Against Black Inventors, 1-8-21
As a side note, two of Susan Breedlove’s friends were employed by Frederick McKinley Jones while they attended Augsburg College. One was the late Dr. Richard Green, former superintendent of Minneapolis Public Schools.