Black History Month takes on a whole new meaning for me now. So do potato chips, the Super Soaker, and golf tees.
Last year, I had the honor and privilege of working on a custom art piece for a friend and the impact of it continues to rock my world. Her request was to create a typographical piece that included as many African American inventors and pioneers as I could find in the fields of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM). So, after I did a ton of research, voilà, I had a list of over 40 incredible trailblazers and inventors with world-altering inventions to craft into a work of art.
Then I realized, out of this stunning list, I had only heard of three people.
Three.
That has stuck with me. I was floored by what I didn’t know.
I consider myself fairly well educated and a life-long learner. I actively encourage education and learning in a variety of forms for my two young children. So why didn’t I know these names?
Because I had already checked “learning Black History” off my educational to-do list. I knew about Martin Luther King, Jr., Rosa Parks, George Washington Carver, even Dorothy Height and the impact of Tuskegee University. I assumed I was a more enlightened person for knowing about their work. We all are, aren’t we?
That’s what we think.
But prior to this custom art request, I allowed myself to stop learning about “Black History.” I was living with the assumption that if the information was important enough, it would have shown up in some school curriculum. Well, now I know that that’s not the case.
Even with the great people and accomplishments I learned about in public school, it was by no means complete. George Washington Carver’s legacy is insultingly reduced to peanut products. Mr. Carver’s work at Tuskegee University with sweet potatoes, soybeans, pecans, and peanuts, among many other crops, focused on sharecrop diversity and soil regeneration, would directly impact the national economy. He was an agricultural advisor to President Theodore Roosevelt and Mahatma Gandhi! That’s a lesson in environmental sustainability at a global level, not a legume.
As a society, we think this reduction of accomplishments is enough. We roll our eyes when we see Black History Month because the same faces and bios are highlighted again and again and again. The month itself has become a reduction of an entire group of people who are integral to our nation’s history and have been and continue to be repeatedly cast aside.
So we should know that in 1899, George F. Grant, a Harvard graduate and the first African American Harvard faculty member invented and patented the wooden golf tee. This revolutionized a game that was ironically dominated by white men and only recently allowed a diversity of players to join its ranks.
We should know that the same man who created the Super Soaker Water Gun, Lonnie Johnson, also created a heating system that can revolutionize energy consumption for the planet, has over 90 patents in his name and is STILL inventing to help solve the world’s issues before they become crises.
We should know that George Crum, head chef at the Moon’s Lake House in Saratoga Springs, NY, is attributed with creating the most consumed snack product, the potato chip, to sarcastically appease a complaining customer in 1853. This sparked an international snack craze that has never stopped.
What is also incredible to consider are the trailblazers. In the confines of the research I did for this piece of art, the first African Americans, both men and women, to receive Ph.D’s in various STEM fields are mostly within the 20th century, some as recently as the 1970s. That’s really not that long ago. If you’re in your thirties, these pioneers could be contemporaries of your parents.
But we think, well, that’s great! That’s progress! The door of opportunity is open for a few to lead the way! And a great many of us let it go at that thinking that collectively as a society, we are doing OK.
So if we believe America is a country that welcomes and embraces the diversity of cultures, why is there a Black Lives Matter movement? Why are some states covertly removing Confederate monuments at night and others only proposing they be removed, or worse, relocated? As this all happens around us, we are redefining American culture and society through our action and inaction. By sitting solely on our belief that we think we are doing OK, we are actively regressing from everything these 40+ trailblazers and inventors worked for: a better, more accepting world.
So what do we do? At the very least, we remember these “new” pioneering names and accomplishments. Then we learn more about them and actively incorporate them into our world. Recognize and acknowledge these names as people who worked through adversity to do what most never will: transform a dream into a world-changing reality. Then we should not forget them. We can’t settle for just knowing who they are. We need to uphold the world they envisioned. We need to combat the culture that tried to bury these names in the shifting dunes of history. This is not a month-long endeavor. This must become a daily tribute.
I hope the next time you eat a potato chip, use a water gun, or swing a (mini-) golf club, you’ll remember the effort behind those creations and not take their inventors, existence, and impact for granted. We should be celebrating our history’s successes and brilliant contributors of all backgrounds to showcase what more we can accomplish as a united, collaborative and accepting nation, not to see what bad behavior we can get away with under the guise of being progressive.
For more on this topic, check out Malcolm Gladwell’s stunningly crafted rant about moral licensing.
Enter to win a copy of Kim’s limited edition print, Black History Month Inventors & Pioneers Print by clicking on the link below:
