The Colored Inventor | Page 2

something--indeed, a very great deal--in the field of invention, but it would be of the first importance to us now to know exactly what he has done, and the commercial value of his productions. Unfortunately for us, however, this can never be known in all its completeness.
A very recent experiment in the matter of collecting information on this subject has disclosed some remarkably striking facts, not the least interesting of which is the very widespread belief among those who ought to know better that the colored man has done absolutely nothing of value in the line of invention. This is but a reflex of the opinions variously expressed by others at different times on the subject of the capacity of the colored man for mental work of a high order. Thomas Jefferson's remark that no colored man could probably be found who was capable of taking in and comprehending Euclid, and that none had made any contribution to the civilization of the world through his art, would perhaps appear somewhat excusable when viewed in the light of the prevailing conditions in his day, and on which, of course, his judgment was based; but even at that time Jefferson knew something of the superior quality of Benjamin Banneker's mental equipment, for it is on record that they exchanged letters on that subject.
Coming down to a later day, when our race as a whole had shared, to some extent at least, in the progress of learning, so well informed an exponent of popular thought as Henry Ward Beecher is said to have declared that the whole African race in its native land could be obliterated from the face of the earth without loss to civilization, and yet Beecher knew, or should have known, of the scholarly Dr. Blyden, of Liberia, who was at one time president of the college of Liberia at Monrovia, and minister from his country to the Court of St. James, and whose contributions to the leading magazines of Europe and America were eagerly accepted and widely read on both continents.
Less than ten years ago, in a hotly contested campaign in the State of Maryland, a popular candidate for Congress remarked, in one of his speeches, that the colored race should be denied the right to vote because "none of them had ever evinced sufficient capacity to justify such a privilege," and that "no one of the race had ever yet reached the dignity of an inventor." Yet, at that very moment, there was in the Library of Congress in Washington a book of nearly 500 pages containing a list of nearly 400 patents representing the inventions of colored people.
Only a few years later a leading newspaper in the city of Richmond, Va., made the bold statement that of the many thousands of patents annually granted by our government to the inventors of our country, "not a single patent had ever been granted to a colored man." Of course this statement was untrue, but what of that? It told its tale, and made its impression--far and wide; and it is incumbent upon our race now to outrun that story, to correct that impression, and to let the world know the truth.
In a recent correspondence that has reached nearly two-thirds of the more than 12,000 registered patent attorneys in this country, who are licensed to prosecute applications for patents before the Patent Office at Washington, it is astonishing to have nearly 2,500 of them reply that they never heard of a colored inventor, and not a few of them add that they never expect to hear of one. One practising attorney, writing from a small town in Tennessee, said that he not only has never heard of a colored man inventing anything, but that he and the other lawyers to whom he passed the inquiry in that locality were "inclined to regard the whole subject as a joke." And this, remember, comes from practising lawyers, presumably men of affairs, and of judgment, and who keep somewhat ahead of the average citizen in their close observation of the trend of things.
Now there ought not to be anything strange or unbelievable in the fact that in any given group of more than 10,000,000 human beings, of whatever race, living in our age, in our country, and developing under our laws, one can find multiplied examples of every mental bent, of every stage of mental development, and of every evidence of mental perception that could be found in any other similar group of human beings of any other race; and yet, so set has become the traditional attitude of one class in our country toward the other class that the one class continually holds up before its eyes an imaginary boundary line in all things mental, beyond which it seems unwilling to admit