Henry Blair was the second Black person to ever get a patent. I could just leave it at that because that shit is nuts. Could you imagine creating something and not being able to get people to look at it or even acknowledge that you created it because of the color of your skin? Well, that was just how things were back then. Stupid country. Blair's first patent was for what he called a seed-planter which is basically a plow. I can't begin to imagine what it was like before he made this thing.
With this it let workers plant corn
faster, easier, and with less labor. You may notice that most early
inventions by Black people were things to make life just easier on
Black labor (farming equipment and cleaning tools) or to fit in (hair
straighteners). He also created the cotton planter. If you don't know
what this is just picture in those old cartoons where a horse would
be pulling a huge blade and it would leave a slice in the ground for
seeds to be dropped in. He was already a farmer and doing well
because of his inventions.
