Black Inventors, Crafting Over 200 Years of Success, clearly highlights the work of Black inventors from over seventy countries. The author, Keith C. Holmes, has spent more than twenty years researching information on inventions by Black people from Australia, Bahamas, Barbados, Botswana, Canada, Cuba, Ethiopia, France, Germany, Ghana, Dominican Republic, Guadeloupe, Guyana, Haiti, Italy, Jamaica, Japan, Kenya, Mozambique, Netherlands, Nigeria, St. Vincent, South Africa, Tanzania, Trinidad and Tobago, the United Kingdom and the United States just to name a few. Without innovations, inventions, plans, financial resources, labor saving devices, materials and muscle, no civilization can exist and flourish.

This book documents a number of the inventions, patents and labor saving devices conceived by black inventors. Africans, before the period of their enslavement, developed: agricultural tools, building materials, medicinal herbs, cloth and weapons, among many other inventions. Though millions of black people were brought to Canada, the Caribbean, Central and South America and the United States in chains and under the yoke of slavery, it is relatively unknown that thousands of Africans and their descendants developed numerous labor- saving devices and inventions that spawned companies which generated money and jobs, worldwide.

The focus of this book is to introduce readers to the fact that inventions created by black people, both past and present, were developed and patented on a global scale. This also means that there are inventors in every culture, although in the past the focus has been primarily on American and European inventors. Today, the new giants in the patenting process are Brazil, China, India, Japan, Nigeria, South Africa and South Korea.

Black inventors, from the very beginning of their involvement in the invention and patenting process, have had an important and earth- shattering impact on the world. This book highlights the work of early black inventors from almost all fifty states in the United States. It gives details about the first Black inventor who obtained a patent in both the Caribbean and the United States. In the United States, to date, seventeen African American men have been inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame. Two of these inventors, Jan E, Matzeliger, (Suriname) and Elijah McCoy, (Colchester, Canada) were born outside the United States.

Recently, Dr. Patricia Bath was nominated to the National Inventors Hall of Fame; but, an African American woman has not yet been inducted into this prestigious organization. Mr. Holmes documents the creativity of black women inventors from Africa, Canada, the Caribbean, the United Kingdom and the United States, and provides readers with a comprehensive view of the ground-breaking achievements of black inventors – both male and female.

This is one of the first books that address the diversity of black inventors and their inventions from a global perspective. The material available in this book is an introduction to the world of black inventors. Effectively, it gives the reader, researcher, librarian, student, and teacher the materials they needed to understand that the Black inventor is not only a national phenomenon, but also a global giant.

Black Inventors, Crafting Over 200 Years of Success identifies black inventors from five continents, over seventy countries, including almost all fifty states in the United States. Citing a number of black inventors from 1769 – 2007, this book is one of the most comprehensive works on black Inventors since Henry E. Baker's research on Black inventors in the early 20th century.