Inquiring into the Lives of Black Inventors: Introducing a New Curriculum

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by Alexander G-J Pittman, Dan Krutka, and Danetra King

The stories we tell about technological change shape how students see themselves, and how they understand their place in the world. Often, when teachers teach about inventors or textbooks include them, the story is a heroic story of an individual, often a white man such as Thomas Edison, Alexander Graham Bell, or Nikola Tesla. Students are told they ushered in not just technological progress, but social progress, with their patented invention. Students are often encouraged to become inventors or innovators themselves. 

This is also true of Black inventors, who have long been taught, particularly in Black schools or during Black History Month. Students are often taught to celebrate what was made and learn about the patent. Too often, less attention is paid to the complex lives of Black inventors—what brought them joy, what they believed was worth changing, and how did they endure anti-Black racism? With this post, we are introducing the Black Inventor’s Curriculum that begins with a different premise: the lives of Black inventors are not just stories of invention, but stories for inquiry into complexity, context, and meaning. We can learn as much from the lives of inventors as we can from learning about their inventions.

A Tradition of Teaching about Black Invention

Our curriculum opens not with Black inventors, but by telling the story of those who sought to preserve, document, and publicly defend Black invention. Their legacy is carried on by educators who teach about Black Inventors in schools, particularly during Black History Month. We hope this curriculum carries on that tradition. Students start by reading the following passage:

In 1894, a man named George Washington Murray stood in the U.S. Congress and read aloud a list of inventions made by Black Americans. At the time, he was the only Black member in either body of the U.S. Congress. The list showed inventions like farm tools, machines, and everyday objects. Murray was once enslaved, but he became a farmer, teacher, inventor, and politician. He was on the list several times as he earned patents for farm tools to help small farmers work more easily.

The list Murray read was created by Henry E. Baker, who worked at the U.S. Patent Office. Baker wanted to prove that Black inventors were creative, skilled, and important to the country, even though white people wrote in newspapers that they were not because of their race. No official records catalogued that information. He spent years conducting research and sending letters to record what became known as “Baker’s List.” 

In 1900, W.E.B. Du Bois traveled to the 1900 Paris Exposition, a world’s fair featuring the innovations of the new century. Du Bois, along with his co-organizers, Daniel Murray (Assistant Librarian of Congress) and Thomas J. Calloway (lawyer and fundraiser), created the “The Exhibit of American Negroes.” These men challenged racist ideologies by showcasing the progress and material conditions of Black Americans just 35 years after the end of slavery using photographs and data visualizations. Part of this story was to showcase Black invention that had been catalogued by Baker and shared by Murray.

Together, these Black men helped protect these inventors from being forgotten. One legacy of their work is that there is still a long tradition of teaching Black inventors in schools, particularly during Black History Month.

Conceptual Framing

This curriculum is both informed by and interpreted through the interrelated theories of LaGarrett King’s (2020, 2023) Black Historical Consciousness (BHC) and Rayvon Fouché’s (2005) humanizing approach to the study of Black invention. While these concepts were developed separately, they share common themes that helped us develop curricula on Black inventors.

King (2020, 2023) developed Black Historical Consciousness (BHC) as a framework to facilitate Black history educators in developing curriculum and effective pedagogical approaches. BHC contends that Black histories must center Black people's historical experiences and voices through eight principles: (1) Power, Oppression, & Anti-Blackness; (2) Agency, Resistance, & Justice; (3) Africa & the African Diaspora; (4) Black Emotionality; (5) Black Identities; (6) Black Historical Contention; (7) Community Local, & Social Histories; (8) Black Futurism.  

Fouché's 2005 book Black Inventors in the Age of Segregation explored the life and work of three African American inventors: Granville Woods (1856–1910), an independent inventor; Lewis Latimer (1848–1928), a commercial engineer with General Electric; and Shelby Davidson (1868–1930), who worked in the U.S. Treasury Department. In examining the lives of these men, Fouché argued that Black inventors are often presented within a framework of historical reduction that emphasizes names, inventions, and patent numbers but fails to promote their humanity and lived experiences.

Both King (2020, 2023) and Fouché (2005) put forth frameworks that tell a more complete story of Black history, humanizing the individuals through whom we learn it.

Overview of the Black Inventors Curriculum

At the heart of this curriculum is a compelling question that frames the entire activity: What lessons should we learn from the lives of Black inventors? This compelling question should appear toward the beginning of the unit and then students participate in a “debate” to answer it at the end. With this question, we invite students into a process of examining sources from varied perspectives about the fuller human experiences behind Black invention. As we’ve noted, students are not simply provided a biography of accomplishment, but offered a range of sources that can help make sense of the multiple layers, and interpretations, of the inventors’ lives. These sources help students explore the conditions in which these individuals lived and worked, the barriers they faced, the choices they made, and the ways they navigated their historical contexts.

Before we jump into how the curriculum plays out, we want to share the numerous resources we’ve curated to support educators using the curriculum:

• Teacher’s Resources: This page includes our approach to Black inventors, sample state standards, and a teachers’ guide;

• Worksheets: We created worksheets for the African inventors page and a worksheet that can be used with each individual inventor;

• Book List: We created a page with our recommended books, including those we use in the inquiry (this list can be provided for the school to purchase), those we recommend that are not directly included, and those we recommend for teachers’ to learn more;

We were intentional in choosing Black inventors for whom we could find rich sources for students to investigate. At the advice of James Howard of the Black Inventor’s Hall of Fame, we sought to ensure we represented different time periods. Danetra ensured we added Black women to our curriculum, who are too often excluded. When we set out to find sources, we wanted to ensure that students would have access to multiple modes of texts. Our vetting process centered on valuing quality, not necessarily quantity. While we wanted to offer as many sources as we could, we also remembered throughout the process that we would rather strive for accuracy and avoid further stigmatization of these Black inventors in order to allow their truths to be displayed. As of this publication, our curriculum includes the following Black inventors:

African inventors (ancient to present) — The curriculum highlights African technological traditions such as pottery, ironworking, bronze casting, architecture, and medicine to challenge Eurocentric narratives that often erase Africa’s long history of invention and scientific knowledge.

Slavery and Early Republic

Benjamin Banneker (1731–1806) — A mathematician, astronomer, and almanac author who contributed to surveying Washington, D.C. As a free Black man, his achievements challenged anti-Black racism in the early United States, and he wrote letters challenging Thomas Jefferson directly on the topic. 

John P. Parker (1827–1900) — Born enslaved in Virginia, Parker purchased his freedom and later became an inventor, businessman, and conductor on the Underground Railroad. His story highlights the connections between Black invention, self-emancipation, and resistance to slavery during the nineteenth century.

Reconstruction and Industrialization

Elijah McCoy (1844–1929) — An engineer who invented an automatic lubrication system for steam engines during the expansion of the railroad industry. Despite anti-Black discrimination limiting his educational and employment opportunities, his inventions became widely used in industrial transportation.

Lewis H. Latimer (1848–1928) — An inventor and draftsman who improved electric lighting technology and contributed to telephone patents during the rise of industrial electrification. As the son of formerly enslaved parents whose fight for freedom gained publicity in Massachusetts, Latimer was a rare case of a Black man of his time who was able to establish a career in the electric light industry—working first for the United States Electric Lighting Company and then the Edison Electric Light Company.

George W. Murray (1853–1926) — A formerly enslaved farmer, inventor, teacher, and politician, he earned patents for agricultural tools designed to improve farming efficiency. During Reconstruction and Jim Crow, Murray used his position in Congress to publicly recognize Black inventors and challenge racist claims about Black intellectual inferiority.

Sarah E. Goode (1855–1905) — One of the first Black women to receive a U.S. patent. Her folding cabinet bed responded to the crowded living conditions of urban apartment life during the nineteenth century and is often considered a precursor to the Murphy bed.

Granville T. Woods (1856–1910) — An inventor and engineer best known for improving railroad communication and electrical railway systems during the rapid industrial expansion of the late nineteenth century. Woods frequently had to defend his inventions in court against patent disputes, including challenges from Thomas Edison, revealing the difficulties Black inventors faced in protecting their intellectual property.

Jim Crow and Early 20th Century

Madam C. J. Walker (1867–1919) — A businesswoman and inventor who transformed Black hair care products and built a national company. During the Jim Crow era, she created economic opportunities for Black women while also supporting civil rights activism and Black institution building.

Garrett Morgan (1877–1963) — An inventor and businessman known for the gas mask and three-way traffic signal during a period of rapid industrialization and urban growth. Morgan faced racial discrimination in marketing his inventions, including hiring a white actor to demonstrate his safety hood to white buyers. While we generally discourage the “heroification” of historical figures, Morgan quite literally used his safety hood to save the lives of many men trapped in a tunnel after an explosion.

Cold War and Contemporary Innovation

Gladys West (1930–2026) — A mathematician whose calculations and satellite geodesy research contributed to the development of GPS technology during the Cold War and early computer age. West pursued advanced education despite growing up under racial segregation in Virginia.

Lonnie Johnson (1949– ) — An engineer and inventor best known for the Super Soaker water gun. Johnson’s career at NASA and the U.S. Air Force reflects the expanding role of Black engineers in aerospace and consumer technology in the late twentieth century.

Marian Croak (1955– ) — An engineer whose work on Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) helped shape internet-based communication technologies such as Zoom and online conferencing. Her innovations also supported mobile text donation systems during disasters like Hurricane Katrina and the Haiti earthquake.

Why Inquiry?

This curriculum is designed around inquiry because inquiry invites students to make sense of evidence, interpretation, and historical complexity rather than memorizing isolated facts. While there are many excellent resources that offer biographies of Black Inventors, our curriculum encourages students to be sense-makers in determining the significant lessons from Black Inventors’ lives. We therefore used the Inquiry Design Model (IDM) to create a unit whereby students learning through the following components (italicized definitions come from https://c3teachers.org/idm/):

• Staging the Question: An academically rigorous question that is relevant to students and sparks curiosity and drives the inquiry. To encourage curiosity and provide context for the inquiry, we open with the story of Henry E. Baker and others who created a list of Black inventors during a time when anti-Black racism and white supremacy discounted Black inventive ability.

• Compelling Question: An academically rigorous question that is relevant to students and sparks curiosity and drives the inquiry. Teachers pose the compelling question students seek to answer throughout the inquiry: What lessons should we learn from the lives of Black inventors? There is not one right answer to this question. Students are encouraged to use evidence to make informed arguments about what they think matters.

• Supporting Questions: Questions that help students explore specific content and aspects of the compelling question. Each supporting question is intended to support answering the big question. For each inventor, we ask, why does this inventor’s life (still) matter? Here, teachers can choose whether to have students all learn about three inventors, or assign students to small groups to learn about the 13 (and counting) inventors in the full curriculum.

• Formative Performance Tasks: Exercises that allow students to build knowledge and skills throughout the inquiry. For each supporting question, we added questions on a worksheet so students can work through questions about each Black inventor they study. The questions are built on Rayvon Fouché’s humanizing Black inventor approach and LaGarrett King’s Black Historical Consciousness Principles (more on those ideas below).

• Featured Sources: A curated collection of primary and secondary sources that provide evidence and context. We have scoured the internet for the best sources we could find on each inventor. Our sources include patents, text or video biographies, related inventors or inventions, and much more. Students work their way through these sources, even encountering different perspectives on inventors that require them to learn sourcing and evaluative research skills.

• Summative Performance Task: A culminating argumentative task where students synthesize their learning to address the compelling question. After studying the inventors, students answer the compelling question in a whole class “debate.” We put debate in parenthesis because we are not encouraging the type of cynical debate we see from politicians on social media, but instead, a debate of ideas where students learn from and value each other’s ideas and interpretations about the sources they studied. We have organized the summative performance task as a Black Inventor Museum and whole class discussion. 

• Taking Informed Action: Encourages students to apply their learning to real-world contexts. Finally, students should go beyond learning content and apply it to their world. Students could, for example, share their learning beyond the classroom and advocate for equal access to advanced STEM classes in their schools and districts. This step helps students grow as active citizens who learn different ways to advocate for a more just world.

You can learn more about the possibilities and pitfalls of IDM lessons in Dan’s prior research. However, we want to note that this curriculum can be modified and adapted for numerous contexts (museums, libraries, community centers) and age levels (elementary to the elderly). Using the curriculum can be as simple as directing people to the curriculum home page.

The curriculum is intentionally designed to be flexible and adaptable across grade levels, from elementary classrooms to teacher education settings. By focusing on the compelling question and supporting questions, educators can adjust the depth and complexity of analysis to meet their students' developmental needs. Additionally, the curriculum can be integrated into science activities. This interdisciplinary potential reinforces the idea that science is not separate from history or society. We hope this curriculum helps students see invention not simply as technological progress, but as part of larger struggles over freedom, recognition, and human dignity.

Reference for the Curriculum

Pittman, A. G. J., Krutka, D. G., & King, D. (2026). Black inventors inquiry. Civics of Technology. https://www.civicsoftechnology.org/blackinventors

References

King, L. J. (2020). Black history is not American history: Toward a framework of Black historical consciousness. Social Education, 84(6), 335-341.

King, L. J. (2023). Introduction: How Do I Start Teaching Black History?Social Studies and the Young Learner, 35(3), 3-4.

Krutka, D. G., & Hlavacik, M. (2025). Refining criteria for civic inquiry: An analysis of inquiry design model lessons. Theory & Research in Social Education, 53(4), 538-564.

Fouché, R. (2005). Black inventors in the age of segregation: Granville T. Woods, Lewis H. Latimer, and Shelby J. Davidson. John Hopkins University Press. 

Authors

Alexander G-J Pittman spent nearly a decade teaching secondary social studies before earning his Ph.D. and moving into social studies teacher education. His work on the teaching and learning of Black history is rooted in childhood stories from his mother and grandmother about Black resistance, achievement, and creativity—stories that continue to shape and inspire his scholarship.

Daniel G. Krutka, Ph.D. is a former classroom teacher, and current education professor and co-Executive Director of Civics of Technology. His interest in Black inventors began with his inquiry on Lewis Latimer and electric lights and has continued into this larger project.

Danetra King, M.Ed., is a K-12 classroom teacher and a Ph.D. candidate. Her focus is in Curriculum and Instruction - Language and Literacy Studies. She became interested in this curriculum specifically because she felt that the underrepresented stories at its center deserved to be told.