A Humanizing Approach to Teaching Black Inventors

In his opinion piece, Ezelle Sanford III argues that although the way history remembers Black inventors has changed over time, it still often falls short by focusing too narrowly on inventions instead of full human lives. Early efforts, such as Carter G. Woodson’s creation of Negro History Week, emphasized patents and technological achievements to fight racist claims of Black inferiority during Jim Crow. Later, during the civil rights era, fuller biographies of figures like George Washington Carver were used to inspire pride and resilience. Today, however, Sanford argues that internet lists and simplified stories again reduce Black inventors to names and products, stripping away context, struggle, and identity. He points to newer works such as Hidden Figures and The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks as better models because they show inventors as complex people shaped by race, gender, sexuality, and history. Sanford concludes that truly honoring Black inventors requires understanding their lives, not just counting their inventions. This aligns with scholarship, namely Rayvon Fouché’s book and LaGarrett King’s approach to Black Historical Consciousness, that has informed our approach. This inquiry curriculum aims to tell about the full lives of Black inventors, not reduce them to their inventions.

Technoskeptical Practice

Scholars at the Civics of Technology project contend that technology is too often only understood for its intended purpose and benefits (Krutka et al., 2022). Cultivating a technoskeptical outlook encourages students to suspend their judgment and critically inquire into not just benefits, but also unintended, collateral, and disproportionate effects of technological change. In the realm of Black invention, this is illustrated by how, for example, Black computer scientists such as Joy Buolamwini and Timnit Gebru have challenged the racial bias and harms of AI technologies. Educators can view technoskeptical frameworks and questions on our Curriculum page.