Writing in 1913, fifty years after the Emancipation Proclamation, Henry Baker of the United States Patent Office surveys the inventions of Black Americans since freedom. He names inventors from Philadelphia, New York, Ohio, South Carolina and Alabama, including Jan Matzeliger of Lynn, and argues that their record answers those who doubted the race’s capacity.
A short, pioneering record by a Patent Office examiner who spent years documenting Black inventors. Download the free EPUB.