On second thought....see below....just a few.....of some notable African-American inventors.

Benjamin Banneker
(1731-1806)
Born into a family of free blacks in Maryland, Banneker learned the rudiments of reading, writing, and arithmetic from his grandmother and a Quaker schoolmaster. Later he taught himself advanced mathematics and astronomy. He is best known for publishing an almanac based on his astronomical calculations.

Rebecca Cole
(1846-1922)
Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Cole was the second black woman to graduate from medical school (1867). She joined Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell, the first white woman physician, in New York and taught hygiene and childcare to families in poor neighborhoods.

Edward Alexander Bouchet
(1852-1918)
Born in New Haven, Connecticut, Bouchet was the first African American to graduate (1874) from Yale College. In 1876, upon receiving his Ph.D. in physics from Yale, he became the first African American to earn a doctorate. Bouchet spent his career teaching college chemistry and physics.


Dr. Daniel Hale Williams
(1856-1931)
Williams was born in Pennsylvania and attended medical school in Chicago, where he received his M.D. in 1883. He founded the Provident Hospital in Chicago in 1891, and he performed the first successful open heart surgery in 1893.

George Washington Carver
(1865?-1943)
Born into slavery in Missouri, Carver later earned degrees from Iowa Agricultural College. The director of agricultural research at the Tuskegee Institute from 1896 until his death, Carver developed hundreds of applications for farm products important to the economy of the South, including the peanut, sweet potato, soybean, and pecan.

Charles Henry Turner
(1867-1923)
A native of Cincinnati, Ohio, Turner received a B.S. (1891) and M.S. (1892) from the University of Cincinnati and a Ph.D. (1907) from the University of Chicago. A noted authority on the behavior of insects, he was the first researcher to prove that insects can hear.

George Washington Carver.....does he at least ring a bell with you? Anyone who has had open heart surgery can say a prayer of thanks for Dr. Williams. Just sayin'.....and the list "does" go on, just in case you're wondering....

Actually I believe that it was LBJ's war on poverty that started the African American's problems and if anything amplified them. It was the idea that an unwed mother would receive more in welfare than a married couple would receive. This started the destruction of the family unit in the black community.

Both parents are needed in a home to really help produce offspring that is both productive and law abiding.

Things that I have noticed in my own family is that mothers are sympathetic to the boys while fathers are sympathetic to the girls. But a home that has both a mother and father will be balanced and thereby teaching the young males how to properly treat a woman and also teaches the females how to properly treat a man.

It teaches etiquette and manners and respect for each other. My son received more spankings and harsh discipline because I knew that one day he would have to be the father. Unfortunately that never materialized but the girls always got a pass from me and my wife cracked down on the girls.

This seems to be missing from the African American one parent home. The boys run scot-free and the girls tend to give the boys free use of their bodies which produces more children to be raised by teen aged mothers.

I don't have the answers but something should be done to encourage the family unit in the black community. Whether this would take a rewriting of welfare to include the father may be one way of doing it. Getting these kids on the right track toward each other as well as the opposite sex would help a lot.