Black Inventors and the Patents That Changed America

Thomas Jennings became the first known Black American to receive a U.S. patent in 1821 — a dry-cleaning process he used the proceeds from to buy his enslaved family’s freedom. Two centuries later, the list of Black inventors who hold consequential patents stretches from carbon-filament lighting (Lewis Latimer) to refrigerated trucking (Frederick McKinley Jones) to the modern home video-game console (Jerry Lawson) to the laser cataract surgery (Patricia Bath) used on millions of patients today. This page catalogues twelve of those patents with the live USPTO records linked, plus the historical context that explains why the contribution often went unrecognized for decades.

12 Black inventors and their verifiable U.S. patents

1. Thomas L. Jennings — dry-scouring process. US X3306 (1821). The first U.S. patent granted to a Black inventor. Jennings, a free man and tailor in New York, patented an early dry-cleaning method. Pre-1836 patents are referenced by the “X” prefix because the original records burned in the 1836 Patent Office fire — see our history of patent law hub for context. Jennings used the patent revenue to purchase his wife and children’s freedom from slavery.
2. Lewis Latimer — durable carbon filament for lamps. US 252,386 — Process of manufacturing carbons. Latimer worked in Edison’s lab and earlier with Hiram Maxim. His 1882 patent for a carbon-filament manufacturing process produced filaments that lasted far longer than Edison’s originals — making practical electric lighting possible in homes and offices, not just demonstration installations. Latimer also drafted the patent drawings for Bell’s telephone in 1876.
3. Granville T. Woods — multiplex telegraph. US 373,915 — Induction telegraph system. Granted 1887, this patent let train dispatchers communicate with moving trains via the railroad’s electrical system — preventing collisions on single-track lines. Edison filed competing claims and Woods won the priority dispute. Woods held over 50 patents and was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2006.
4. Elijah McCoy — automatic lubricator for steam engines. US 129,843 — Improvement in lubricators for steam-engines. Granted 1872. McCoy’s lubricator dripped oil onto engine bearings while the engine was running, eliminating the need to stop the locomotive for manual oiling. Engineers asked specifically for “the real McCoy,” refusing knockoffs — that idiom traces directly to Elijah McCoy’s name on this patent.
5. Sarah Boone — improved ironing board. US 473,653 — Ironing-board. Granted 1892. Boone’s narrow, curved board allowed pressing the inside and outside of fitted sleeves — a real engineering improvement on the flat board that preceded it. She was one of the first Black women to receive a U.S. patent.
6. Garrett Morgan — three-position traffic signal. US 1,475,024 — Traffic signal. Granted 1923. Morgan’s patent added the third “all-stop” or warning interval between green and red — the precursor to the yellow light. He also held US 1,113,675 (1914) on a smoke hood that became the basis for the U.S. Army gas mask used in WWI.
7. Madam C.J. Walker (Sarah Breedlove) — hair-care formulations and applicator. Walker built the first Black-owned cosmetics empire in the U.S. on a portfolio of hair-care products and applicator patents in the early 1900s. By the time of her death in 1919 she was the wealthiest self-made woman in America. (Patent records from this era are partially documented in the USPTO archive; many of Walker’s specific filings are catalogued through the National Park Service’s Madam Walker National Historic Site.)
8. Frederick McKinley Jones — refrigerated transport unit. US 2,475,841 — Refrigeration apparatus. Jones’s 1949 patent on a self-contained, shock-resistant refrigeration unit for trucks created the entire frozen-food and refrigerated-trucking industry. He co-founded what became Thermo King. Jones held more than 60 patents and received the National Medal of Technology posthumously in 1991.
9. Patricia Bath — laserphaco cataract surgery. US 4,744,360 — Apparatus for ablating and removing cataract lenses. Granted 1988. Bath was the first Black woman doctor to receive a medical patent. The Laserphaco Probe revolutionized cataract surgery — it’s estimated to have restored or improved vision for millions of patients. Bath was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2022.
10. Mark Dean — IBM Personal Computer architecture. Dean co-invented the IBM PC and led the team that developed the first gigahertz CPU. He holds three of the original nine IBM PC patents, the architectural foundation of the entire PC industry that followed.
11. Lonnie Johnson — Super Soaker. US 5,074,437 — Pneumatic toy gun. Johnson, a NASA nuclear engineer, was prototyping a heat pump in 1982 when a high-pressure water jet sprayed across his bathroom and inspired the world’s top-selling water gun. Larami licensed the patent in 1989; Hasbro acquired the line in 1995. Cumulative Super Soaker sales have exceeded $1 billion.
12. Jerry Lawson — interchangeable cartridge video game console. Lawson led the team that created the Fairchild Channel F in 1976 — the first home video-game console with swappable ROM cartridges. Every cartridge-based console that followed (Atari 2600, NES, SNES, Genesis) is in the architectural lineage of his work.

Why this history was systematically undercredited

Until the 1870s, enslaved inventors could not legally hold U.S. patents — the law considered them property, not legal persons capable of swearing the inventor’s oath. Patents that emerged from the labor of enslaved people were filed in the slaveholder’s name when they were filed at all. Even after emancipation, systemic barriers — restricted access to legal counsel, biased examiners, and difficulty raising capital to commercialize a granted patent — meant many Black inventors who did file struggled to capture the economic value of their work.

The result is that the historical record systematically undercounts Black inventive contribution. The work of historians like Henry E. Baker (a Black USPTO examiner who in 1900 compiled the first comprehensive list of Black-held U.S. patents) and modern projects like the National Park Service’s African American Inventors Database have been the main correctives. Many filings catalogued today were not systematically tracked until decades after they issued.

Three patents whose downstream impact runs into the billions

Three of the patents above produced multi-billion-dollar downstream industries:

• Frederick Jones’s refrigerated transport (1949). The global cold chain — frozen food, refrigerated pharma, vaccine distribution — all scales out from the patented unit Jones built. Thermo King is now part of Trane Technologies, a $50B+ public company.
• Mark Dean’s IBM PC architecture (1981+). The original PC architecture is the basis of every Windows computer, every server, every x86-based device shipped in the last 40 years. The downstream economic impact is measured in trillions.
• Patricia Bath’s Laserphaco probe (1988). Cataract surgery is the most-performed surgical procedure in the world — over 4 million procedures a year in the U.S. alone. The Laserphaco approach is one of the dominant techniques.

Each of these inventors followed the same pattern: solve a specific technical problem, file a defensible patent, and use the protected window to entrench the technology in commercial use. The patent system worked for them because they used it — early, and with enough specificity to survive examination and post-grant challenge.

From our spoke library

A few entries in our 1,962-patent library overlap with the inventors above or with fields they pioneered. Browse the live USPTO records:

• US 1,475,024 — Garrett Morgan’s three-position traffic signal
• US 129,843 — Elijah McCoy’s automatic engine lubricator
• US 5,074,437 — Lonnie Johnson’s Super Soaker pneumatic toy
• US 2,475,841 — Frederick Jones’s refrigerated transport

(If a link 404s, the patent hasn’t been pulled into our daily spoke set yet — USPTO records on Google Patents are always authoritative.)

What this teaches first-time inventors

The patents above span 200 years and a dozen industries, but the recipe is the same every time: a specific real-world problem, a novel mechanism that solves it, a well-drafted patent claim that protects the mechanism (not the marketing), and the discipline to file before the public disclosure that would forfeit your rights. That recipe still works today, regardless of who you are or where you came from. The legal bar is identical for everyone.

The cheapest first step is a provisional application — $65 at the micro-entity tier locks in your priority date and gives you 12 months to refine your claim before committing to a full utility filing.

File a provisional patent application with LegalZoom →

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Read next

• How to patent an idea — the procedural roadmap, start to finish.
• Celebrity patents you didn’t know existed — verified USPTO records for actors, musicians, and one U.S. president.
• The most valuable patents in history — the patents whose downstream economic value runs into the hundreds of billions.