19th-Century Inventors of Color Who Fought for Civil Rights

Today, I thought I’d honor Martin Luther King Day by taking a look at—and learning about—three extraordinary men of color from the nineteenth century. Great inventors all, these men fought for the rights of their countrymen, delivered lectures, revolutionized many technologies, and wrote poetry.

An excellent resource about nineteenth-century inventors who were people of color comes in the form of Henry Baker’s The Colored Inventor: A Record of Fifty Years, but I drew my research from addition...