Even with barely a 7th grade education, radio repair man Joseph Jackson found ways to busy his curious mind by taking electronics apart and finding out how they worked.
Tinkering with a television remote in his workstation, Jackson crafted an upgrade that would change the viewing experience for TV viewers around the world forever.
Jackson invented an upgrade to the V-chip device within a television remote which served as the predecessor for the parental control function.
He currently holds six total U.S. patents for telecommunications and fertility prediction inventions, but it was the epiphany sparked by Black schoolchildren that produced his greatest contribution to the science, technology, engineering, and mechanics fields.
As a former middle school dropout in Jefferson Parish, Louisiana, the future Dr. Jackson wanted to broaden the horizons of Black children by incorporating the contributions of Black inventors in textbooks to contrast the limited depictions of only athletic or musical career paths.
In 1994, the Black Inventors Museum did just that.
Dr. Jackson co-founded the Black Inventors Museum that still travels across the country sharing the work of hundreds of Black inventors that don’t get enough credit for the precedent they’ve set for future youth to follow.
This is what lifting as you climb does to instill pride and hope in the next generation.