Since the beginning of time, Black people have been creating and inventing. We are truly the Mothers and Fathers of Civilization. This truth is important to state because recently, about the last 500 years, we’ve been made to think that we have not contributed to the onward march of civilization when it’s quite the opposite.

I have heard the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan say, I’m paraphrasing, that our ancestors buried civilizations in the sand and in the oceans to keep our wisdom of high science hidden from the newcomer to the planet. What we produced in the past shows that knowledge has declined, not increased. The earliest pyramids in Egypt show the most knowledge of mathematics. Additionally many ancient civilizations have stories of aircraft and space travel.

That’s why today, you have scholars declaring that the ancients must have been visited by life from another planet with superior knowledge and THEY built the pyramids or at least provided the technology and tools. Ha, no way brother and sisters. We are the ones we’ve been looking for. We went from pyramid builders to project dwellers and now it’s time to be world changers…again.

That’s why I’m pleased to share this book, Black Inventors, Crafting Over 200 Years of Success, which highlights the work of Black inventors from over seventy countries.

The author, Keith C. Holmes, has spent more than twenty years researching Black inventors from countries that include Australia, Bahamas, Barbados, Canada, Cuba, Ethiopia, France, Germany, Ghana, Dominican Republic, Guadeloupe, Guyana, Haiti, Italy, Jamaica, Japan, Kenya, Mozambique, Nigeria, St. Vincent, South Africa, Tanzania, Trinidad and Tobago, the United Kingdom and the United States. Without inventions, innovations, financial resources, materials, muscle and labor saving devices, civilizations cannot exist and flourish.

Below is from the news release I received.

This book documents a number of inventions, patents and labor saving devices conceived by Black inventors. Among many other inventions, pre-enslaved Africans, developed agricultural tools, building materials, medicinal herbs, cloth and weapons. Although historical documents emphasize that millions of Black people arrived in Canada, the Caribbean, Central and South America and the United States under slavery's yoke, it is relatively unknown that thousands of Africans and their descendants developed numerous labor-saving devices and inventions that spawned companies which generated money and jobs, worldwide. While most authors focus primarily on American and European inventors, Keith Holmes introduces inventions, both past and present, that Black people, developed and patented globally and multiculturally.

ADVERTISEMENT

Black Inventors, Crafting Over 200 Years of Success, also features early Black inventors from virtually every state in the US. It includes details about the first Black inventor who obtained a patent in both the Caribbean and the United States. To date, seventeen African American men have been inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame. Two inventors, Jan E, Matzeliger, (Suriname) and Elijah McCoy, (Colchester, Canada) were not born in this country.

Recently, Dr. Patricia Bath, an African American woman, was nominated but not inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame. Providing a comprehensive view of their ground-breaking achievements, Mr. Holmes documents the creativity of Black women inventors from the African diaspora.

The material available in this book, one of the first to address the diversity of black inventors and their inventions from a global perspective, effectively gives the reader, researcher, librarian, student, and teacher the materials they need to understand that the Black inventor is not only a national phenomenon, but also a global giant.

ISBN-13: 978-0-9799573-0-7, ISBN-10: 097-9957303, Description:179p; Maps:21 cm Retail price: $15.00 USD.

Keith Holmes' research has now identified over fifteen thousand inventions and trademarks attributed to inventors of color, spanning a period from 1769 - 2011. His first publication Black Inventors, Crafting Over 200 Years of Successcan be purchased directly online at www.globalblackinventor.com.