19th Century African American Inventors

Technology has fueled inventions by the need for efficiency in producing a product, making everyday living easier, saving lives and improving health conditions to live longer.

African American inventors in a times of slavery and segregation created inventions carried throughout the decades. In the late seventeenth, eighteenth, nineteenth century African-Americans had to work on their inventions and skills against social barriers because of societal beliefs and the value of a person based not on what a person invention or skills has to offer mankind, but the color of a person’s skin. Inventors such as Eli Whitney, Jan Earnst Matzeliger, Garrett Augustus Morgan, James Derham and Mary Elizabeth Mahoney are all pioneers under societal oppression

During the early 17th century European used African-American as indentured slaves to work on plantations and farm land denied basic education, laws prohibited slaves from learning how to read and write. In fear of rebelling against the slave owners. After the American Revolution 1775-1783, the U.S. Constitution recognized each slave as three-fifths of a person, mainly for the slave owner’s taxation.

The northern states abolished slavery between 1774 and 1804 but in the southern states still continued slavery. Which has confined African-Americans to working in domestic services, manual trades and agriculture. Nevertheless a few African-Americans were able to get an education and made significant contributions to society and inspire others to take their ideas and inventions public.

Late 18th century the tobacco fields weakened to produce crops around the same time the textile industry in England had a big demand for cotton. The cotton demand was hastened by separating the seeds from the cotton by

It would take a cotton picker one day to pick the seeds out of one pound of cotton, considering cotton is a very light product that was a lot of cotton to go thought in one day.

Soon after Whitney invented the cotton gin in 1794, the cotton ran through a strainer, a series of hooks dragging the cotton over a mesh removing the seeds from the fibers. The smaller cotton gin could be cranked by hand removing seeds from 50 pounds in one day and the larger cotton gin powered by horse and later by steam made cotton production more efficient.

Eli Whitney and Phineas Miller plantation manager of Mulberry Grove formed a cotton gin manufacturing company, they built and installed cotton gins all over the south. Whitney and Miller made a deal with farmers, a percentage of the cotton profits in return for the cotton gin machine. Instead, the farmers took the design and constructed their own machines. Although Whitney had a patent the laws had many loopholes to bypass the Whitney’s patent. Later Whitney’s patent expired.

The cotton gin machine transformed the way cotton could be processed more efficiently and quickly by the end of the 19th century, cotton was the leading expert in