The pain and suffering experienced by Black innovators in history (and African Americans, generally) have directly impacted the rate of African American innovation in the United States. There are countless stories of Black innovators who've stemmed the tide of racism and have given people like me a platform to be creative. This Black History Month, I want to highlight the impact of these struggles and what these sacrifices mean to me.
For a bit of context, I'm a Total Solution Manager for Dispensing Systems at GOJO. I help develop new and manage dispensing systems for hand hygiene products. Before working at GOJO, I worked in product development at Toys" R" Us, and I have invented and licensed products as an independent inventor. I'm pleased that I've been able to work on many groundbreaking and innovative products both in and outside of GOJO. My Black innovator ancestors would be incredibly proud of all the access and opportunities available to me and many others today. However, for them, the journey was not so easy.
Unfortunately, through this nation's history, a bloody past has directly correlated to the suppression of innovation from the Black community. Dr. Lisa Cook, a world-renowned economist and recent nominee for the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, published a paper in the Journal of Economic Growth that uses the rise in mass violence between 1870 and 1940 as a historical experiment for determining the impact of ethnic and political violence on economic activity. She hypothesizes that the rate of innovation from Black inventors in American history declined during periods of violence and critical segregation legislation. She used the filing of U.S. patents as the metric.1
During the early Reconstruction Era, the rate of U.S. patent filing by Black inventors was one-to-one of White inventors.1 Dr. Cook determined that violent acts accounted for more than 1,100 missing patents compared to 726 actual patents among Black inventors during this period.1 One of those pivotal moments of violence that impacted the innovative efforts of Black inventors was the Tulsa Race Riots of 1921. This brutal mass killing and air bombing of a prominent Greenwood Tulsa neighborhood, known as Black Wall Street, sent shockwaves throughout the Black community. The Oklahoma Bureau of Vital Statistics officially recorded 36 dead, but historians estimate the death toll may have reached 300.2
The impact of these violent acts took a tremendous toll on the Black inventor community, which resulted in significant suppression of patent filings from Black inventors in the coming years. Dr. Cook hypothesizes that even though not only African Americans lived in the neighborhood where the Tulsa Race Riots occurred, the lasting psychological impact of this and other violent events was significant. The monetary loss and economic implications that resulted in America through this loss of innovation are tragic and unimaginable – even still today.
However, I am encouraged that stories like mine and those of many of my amazing Black colleagues will become the norm and not outliers in this nation's history. With record investments in minority student Science, Technology, Engineering and Medicine (STEM) education (K-12 and University), the rising prominence of Black-owned businesses and organizations, and the (slowly) increasing diversity seen in corporate executive offices across the nation, hopefully, the increasing trend of Black innovators will continue. And while the nation continues to deal with its wounds of the past, I will continue to do everything in my power to add meaningful and quality innovation to push us into the future.