June 23rd 2023.
Keith C. Holmes is an accomplished researcher and founder who has dedicated his life's work to researching inventors of color. His company, Global Black Inventor Research Projects, Inc., was created in Brooklyn, New York and now has branches all over the world, giving students of all ages the opportunity to learn more about African creativity and to find their own inventive genius.
Holmes is also the author of Black Inventors, Crafting Over 200 Years of Success, the book he wrote in 2008 that celebrates the innovative accomplishments of black men and women from six different continents and over seventy countries. One of the people he acknowledges in his book is Henry E. Baker, an African American who attended the United States Naval Academy and worked as a copyist at the United States Patent Office in the early twentieth century.
Baker was the one who first opened the door to the possibility of people of color throughout the world filing for patents. His research showed that not only do Western countries have a system of filing patents, but that all societies and civilizations have their own inventions, whether they are patented or not. He sent out over twenty-five hundred letters to lawyers in the United States to find out if anyone had filed for a patent, and received a number of responses that reported over one thousand inventions by black people from Canada, the Caribbean, Central and South America, and the United States.
The journey to write his book began for Holmes in 1988, when he attended the International African Arts Festival in Brooklyn and came across Burt McKinley's book entitled Black Inventors in America. After reading the book, he was so inspired by its content that he considered buying multiple copies to sell. This is when his mentors and family began to encourage him to write his own book about Black inventors. After much thought and consideration, he decided to take their advice and start researching.
His research and dedication paid off when he completed the book in 2008, and proved that the spirit of invention had spread to all African people from around the world. To learn more about Holmes and his other efforts to promote the accomplishments of Black inventors, visit GlobalBlackInventor.com.
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