Black Inventors in the Age of Segregation: Granville T. Woods, Lewis H. Latimer, and Shelby J. Davidson - Hardcover

Rayvon Fouche

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0801873193 ISBN 13: 9780801873195

Publisher: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003

Synopsis

According to the stereotype, late-nineteenth and early-twentieth-century inventors, quintessential loners and supposed geniuses, worked in splendid isolation and then unveiled their discoveries to a marveling world. Most successful inventors of this era, however, developed their ideas within the framework of industrial organizations that supported them and their experiments. For African American inventors, negotiating these racially stratified professional environments meant not only working on innovative designs but also breaking barriers.

In this pathbreaking study, Rayvon Fouché examines the life and work of three African Americans: Granville Woods (1856--1910), an independent inventor; Lewis Latimer (1848--1928), a corporate engineer with General Electric; and Shelby Davidson (1868--1930), who worked in the U.S. Treasury Department. Detailing the difficulties and human frailties that make their achievements all the more impressive, Fouché explains how each man used invention for financial gain, as a claim on entering adversarial environments, and as a means to technical stature in a Jim Crow institutional setting.

Describing how Woods, Latimer, and Davidson struggled to balance their complicated racial identities -- as both black and white communities perceived them -- with their hopes of being judged solely on the content of their inventive work, Fouché provides a nuanced view of African American contributions to -- and relationships with -- technology during a period of rapid industrialization and mounting national attention to the inequities of a separate-but-equal social order.

About this title

About the Author

Rayvon Fouché is an assistant professor in the department of science and technology studies at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

From Booklist

Fouche takes an interesting and challenging approach to examining the lives of three black inventors: Woods, a mechanical engineer who patented an elevator signaling device, an electric railway conduit, and a steam boiler furnace; Latimer, a corporate consultant who copatented the train car lavatory; and Davidson, a federal employee who refined adding machines. Fouche focuses on the "living reality" of these three men, providing context for how they managed the issues of their day, their American identity, their race, and the technology. He also explores the distortions that have led to the mythology surrounding them as blacks have sought heroes and whites have sought to camouflage the contributions made by blacks. He details their personal lives and how they coped with the hardships of invention and the strictures of race. In debunking some of the myths, including financial success and race pride, Fouche humanizes them and examines the greater significance of their work in the context of American sociological and commercial history. Vernon Ford
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Edition details

• Publisher: The Johns Hopkins University Press
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 0801873193
• ISBN 13: 9780801873195
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 225