The Industrial Revolution was a turning point in our history. Machines and processes were invented that improved manufacturing and made Great Britain the world’s leading commercial power. Inventors like James Hargreaves and Richard Arkwright are celebrated. Their contributions are taught as part of the school curriculum and have inspired generations of innovators, all the way up to today’s Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos.
If you type “Industrial Revolution inventors” in a search engine, you may notice a pattern: all the inventors are male, and all are white. An Internet user could see this and think that this demographic was the sole contributor to the Industrial Revolution. More subtly, they could see all these white men and think – perhaps unconsciously – “this is what an innovator looks like”.
Actually, the search engine obeys the same bias than the school curriculum: we look at patented innovations and connect them with economic developments to rate their historical significance.
Here is the problem though. The Industrial Revolution happened between the mid-18th century and the end of the 19th century, when the Atlantic slave trade was in full force. In fact, the development of our textile industry is directly correlated with the expansion of labour camps in plantations in America, to produce cheap cotton. Black people were enslaved to work in these camps. Because they were enslaved, they were not allowed to own any property, including intellectual property.
There are documented accounts for example of a blacksmith called Ned who lived in Mississippi and in the 1850s invented a cotton scraper for ploughing cotton fields. But he was enslaved by Oscar Stewart who tried to claim the patent for this invention, on the grounds that “the master has the same right to the fruits of the labor of the intilect [sic] of his slave”.
It is enraging to think of all the brilliant minds who should have been supported and were instead forced into gruesome, unpaid labour. This is something we unfortunately cannot change now. But here is what we can change: we can rehabilitate their legacies.
We should do this because it is the fair thing to do, but also because of the positive impact it would have on society today. In the words of Lavinya Stennett who set up The Black Curriculum, a campaign for black British history to be embedded into the UK curriculum: “The school curriculum is very whitewashed, and black history is usually either omitted entirely, or taught only in terms of colonialism and slavery, rather than black people’s achievements.”
Imagine the difference it would make if next time you typed “Industrial Revolution inventors” in your search engine you saw not only the well-known faces of James Watt and Samuel Morse but also the full diversity of men and women whose innovations ushered us into the modern age. Imagine the impact on Black pupils, and the careers they may choose to pursue.
Here is a list of 10 Industrial Revolution Black innovators and how their contributions changed lives: ...
https://cecileblanc.com/2020/11/08/where-are-the-black-inventors-of-the-industrial-revolution/
It is telling that I had to find this article already written by someone from the UK. Imagine a journalist in Mississippi or Louisiana bothering to write this and then getting the go-ahead from an editor to publish it in a 'respectable' daily newspaper. Almost impossible to imagine this scenario, huh?
