The Colored Inventor | Page 2

new combinations of old things as will adapt
them to new uses. We know that the colored man has accomplished
something--indeed, a very great deal--in the field of invention, but it
would be of the first importance to us now to know exactly what he has
done, and the commercial value of his productions. Unfortunately for

us, however, this can never be known in all its completeness.
A very recent experiment in the matter of collecting information on this
subject has disclosed some remarkably striking facts, not the least
interesting of which is the very widespread belief among those who
ought to know better that the colored man has done absolutely nothing
of value in the line of invention. This is but a reflex of the opinions
variously expressed by others at different times on the subject of the
capacity of the colored man for mental work of a high order. Thomas
Jefferson's remark that no colored man could probably be found who
was capable of taking in and comprehending Euclid, and that none had
made any contribution to the civilization of the world through his art,
would perhaps appear somewhat excusable when viewed in the light of
the prevailing conditions in his day, and on which, of course, his
judgment was based; but even at that time Jefferson knew something of
the superior quality of Benjamin Banneker's mental equipment, for it is
on record that they exchanged letters on that subject.
Coming down to a later day, when our race as a whole had shared, to
some extent at least, in the progress of learning, so well informed an
exponent of popular thought as Henry Ward Beecher is said to have
declared that the whole African race in its native land could be
obliterated from the face of the earth without loss to civilization, and
yet Beecher knew, or should have known, of the scholarly Dr. Blyden,
of Liberia, who was at one time president of the college of Liberia at
Monrovia, and minister from his country to the Court of St. James, and
whose contributions to the leading magazines of Europe and America
were eagerly accepted and widely read on both continents.
Less than ten years ago, in a hotly contested campaign in the State of
Maryland, a popular candidate for Congress remarked, in one of his
speeches, that the colored race should be denied the right to vote
because "none of them had ever evinced sufficient capacity to justify
such a privilege," and that "no one of the race had ever yet reached the
dignity of an inventor." Yet, at that very moment, there was in the
Library of Congress in Washington a book of nearly 500 pages
containing a list of nearly 400 patents representing the inventions of

colored people.
Only a few years later a leading newspaper in the city of Richmond,
Va., made the bold statement that of the many thousands of patents
annually granted by our government to the inventors of our country,
"not a single patent had ever been granted to a colored man." Of course
this statement was untrue, but what of that? It told its tale, and made its
impression--far and wide; and it is incumbent upon our race now to
outrun that story, to correct that impression, and to let the world know
the truth.
In a recent correspondence that has reached nearly two-thirds of the
more than 12,000 registered patent attorneys in this country, who are
licensed to prosecute applications for patents before the Patent Office at
Washington, it is astonishing to have nearly 2,500 of them reply that
they never heard of a colored inventor, and not a few of them add that
they never expect to hear of one. One practising attorney, writing from
a small town in Tennessee, said that he not only has never heard of a
colored man inventing anything, but that he and the other lawyers to
whom he passed the inquiry in that locality were "inclined to regard the
whole subject as a joke." And this, remember, comes from practising
lawyers, presumably men of affairs, and of judgment, and who keep
somewhat ahead of the average citizen in their close observation of the
trend of things.
Now there ought not to be anything strange or unbelievable in the fact
that in any given group of more than 10,000,000 human beings, of
whatever race, living in our age, in our country, and developing under
our laws, one can find multiplied examples of every mental bent, of
every stage of mental development, and of every evidence of mental
perception that could be found in any other similar group of human
beings of any other race; and yet, so set has become the traditional
attitude of one class in our country toward the other class that