On a wintry day, my 90-year-old father was in the supermarket trying to pay for his groceries. Bundled up against the cold, his gloved hands were having trouble retrieving and counting the exact change.
The transaction evidently took too long for the man behind him in line, who muttered a curse.
Dad stopped counting, turned around, and warned, “Be quiet or I’ll write a check.”
First Black-American patentIn 1821, the first U.S. patent issued to a Black-American was granted to Thomas Jennings for a “dry-scouring”cleaning process (3 Mar 1821 No. X3306). Jennings used his royalties to buy his family out of slavery and to support the abolition of slavery. In 1831, Thomas Jennings became assistant secretary for the First Annual Convention of the People of Color in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. For some time Henry Blair had been regarded as the first Black-American receiving a patent, for a corn planter (14 Oct 1834, No. X8447), until it became better known that the Jennings held that distinction. |
