July 23: The Real McCoy

On this date in History ... July 23, 1872:

Elijah McCoy is issued patent #129843 for an “Improvement in Lubricators for Steam Engines”.  

McCoy was the son of former slaves who escaped from Kentucky through the Underground Railroad. His reputation on his multiple patented items was so great that people would ask, when buying equipment, if it was “the real McCoy” or an imitation. 50 of his patents dealt with lubricating machines. 

In Booker T. Washington’s 1909 book “The Story of the Negro”, he cited McCoy as having produced more patents than any other black inventor up to that time. 

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February 23: W.E.B. DuBois

On this date in History .... 1868:

W.E.B. DuBois is born in Massachusetts. The initials he is known by stand for William Edward Burghardt.

 

A brilliant scholar, DuBois became the first African-American to obtain a PhD from Harvard and became an influential person in civil rights movements. His first major book was the first sociological study of a black community (Philadelphia).

 

His philosophy was completely opposite of Booker T. Washington, founder and president of the Tuskegee University. “DuBois accused Washington of selling out blacks by advocating silence in civil rights issues in return for vocational training opportunities for blacks.”  

 

He helped found the NAACP in 1909. He broke ties with the group a couple of times before joining the Communist Party in 1961 and becoming a citizen of Ghana in 1963, the year of his death.