We owe our home security systems to a Black woman. In 1966, Marie Van Britton and her husband invented the closed-circuit security system to combat the increase in break-ins in their neighborhood.
Firefighters, pilots, the military, industrial workers, and those of us who depend on them need to thank and praise Garrett Morgan. The gas mask he invented in 1916 has saved literally millions of lives.
Are you reading this on a color screen? It wouldn’t exist without Mark Dean, who is credited with helping to create the first color monitor for computers in the early 1980s. Oh, and that gigahertz (gig) chip? Yeah, him too. We can’t function without that now, can we?
Storing food at the right temperature to kill bacteria? Thomas Elkins. In the 1870s, he used metal cooling coils for modern refrigeration. Fast forward a few decades, and Frederick McKinley Jones would take this concept and work it into modes of transportation, beginning with trucks for blood banks and then on to food trucks, trains, and planes.
We wouldn’t have blood banks and transfusions without Dr. Charles Drew. He figured out how to split plasma and extend its storage life.
Some people can only feel good about themselves by spreading disinformation and suppressing knowledge about others. But we’re not about to let them rewrite and erase our history. Period.