Keith Holmes remembers well the Black history programs he attended as a youth in New York
 
"I grew up in an era when 'Black History Month' was actually just a week," he told The Louisiana Weekly.  "I remember in the fourth grade the names Dr. George Washington Carver and Granville T. Woods being cited as very important men during Black History Month. But for me, growing up in the 1950s and 1960s, I was always curious as to whether there were other inventors besides the ones we were hearing about during Black History Month. It was an interesting time, one of the few times when the focus was on some of the accomplishments of Black men and women."
 
Later, Holmes' curiosity about Black inventors was further sparked by a television series titled "The Bill Cosby Show" that aired from 1969-1971 and celebrated the achievements and milestones of Black people. "It touched on some of the areas of the great accomplishments of Black people and some of the struggles that we had gone through (like) the early civil rights movement," Holmes, 57, said. "It was one of the few shows that I can recall at that time that talked about some of the accomplishments of Black men and women."
 
During a two-year stint at Rutgers University that coincided with the social upheaval brought about by the Vietnam War and the rise in Black consciousness, Holmes was involved in efforts to secure a Black studies department for the university. "That was one of the big struggles I can recall when I was going to college: What were some of the accomplishments that we did as Black folks? The other thing was, how can we make sure that a program or department could be instituted on campus? At the time, we just had a few courses but we did not have a (Black studies) department, per se."
 
After two years, Holmes left Rutgers and began to travel to different parts of the United States, eventually settling in Mississippi for several years. "I wanted to really find out what it was like to live down south," the New York native explained.
 
Ultimately, he returned to New York and earned a degree from Control Data Institute, where he studied computer programming and system design. That training afforded him an opportunity to work at Time-Warner's data center for two years before accepting a post at Home Box Office (HBO), where he remained for 10 years.
  
While working at Time-Warner in 1988, Holmes stumbled across a book written in 1969 by Burt McKinley Jr. titled Black Inventors of America that reignited Holmes' hunger for knowledge about the contributions of people of African descent. "It's excellent resource material," Holmes said. "It really introduces you to some of the things that Black men and women have done and covers Dr. George Washington Carver, Granville T. Woods, Lewis Latimer as well as a lot of other early Black inventors of the United States. It primarily covers inventions by Black folks in the United States, not outside of the nation."
 

Twenty years later, Keith Holmes completed a book that builds upon the scholarly research and writings of McKinley and other important Black historians like Dr. Carter G. Woodson and Joel Augustus Rogers. That book, Black Inventors: Crafting Over 200 Years of Success, celebrates the genius and innovation of people of African descent.
 
When Holmes began his quest to chronicle the inventions of African people living in the United States and around the world, he first sought to determine the earliest book written on the subject. "The first book that I could find was material written by Henry E. Baker who was a patent examiner who worked for the U.S. Patent Office back in the late 1800s and early 1900s," he explained. Although Baker's book, The Colored Inventor: A Record of Fifty Years, was only 12 pages long, Holmes says that book was "the most profound 12 pages that I've ever read.
 
"Through reading that book, I got an idea about what Henry Baker had to go through," he said. "We're talking about a time period when segregation was very strong in the country. Information as to whether or not there were Black inventors did not exist, but this Black man took on a task that was monumental. He sent out 2,500 letters to various patent attorneys throughout the United States, hoping to get some kind of favorable response back to find out whether there were any Black inventors. And he did. He received a number of letters back indicating that the patent attorneys themselves had either never heard of a Black inventor and did not know that Black people could invent anything and other shocking news. But he did receive 1,000 letters back clearly documenting - giving the names, inventions, the date of the patents of Black men and women who had filed for patents. His work currently exists on record at the Moorland-Spingarn Research Center at Howard University in Washington, DC."
 
Holmes said the result of Baker's painstaking research and efforts is a four-volume set which he says is "the first documented record of Black inventors and contains over 1,000 Black inventors."
 
"His work really stimulated me to start researching the names and cities of these Black inventors," Holmes told The Louisiana Weekly.
 
Holmes says when he started researching Black inventors in 1988, most of his work was done in public libraries, legwork that required him to manually sift through books and periodicals to verify names, inventions and dates. The creation and development of the Internet made his job a little easier, although he still had to be meticulous in his fact-finding.
 
While the Information Superhighway put more data at Holmes' fingertips, the project began to take on a life of its own, constantly expanding and presenting him with new challenges. "Initially, I just focused on covering inventors from the United States, but what about Canada, what about the Caribbean, what about the UK, what about Africa?" he said. "Through the use of the Internet and other various data bases around the world, I was able to open up that spectrum of inventions by Black folks and come to the realization that Black inventors are not just here in the United States. In my estimate right now, Black inventors are in 70 countries, five continents and almost all 50 states in the U.S."
 
Holmes credits librarians with providing a major assist as he strove to piece together the achievements of Black inventors in the U.S. "They were very helpful, particularly the librarians in the patent library in New York City," he said. "For years, they saw me coming in after work or on weekends and they were extremely helpful in helping me to get that list of inventors from the United States."
 
Equally helpful in collecting information about Black U.S. inventors was New York City's Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, but Holmes said that he realized that in order to gather data on international Black inventors he needed to think outside the box. To accomplish that aim, he utilized his knowledge of traditional African names to track down African inventors throughout the Diaspora who had not been culturally stripped of their names like enslaved Africans in the United States, Caribbean, Central and South America had been.
 
"They didn't lose their culture in the sense that they still had their names, so if you tapped into a name on an international data base those names begin to crop up," he explained. "That's when I began to delve deep into that area and find the African inventors themselves."
 
Holmes, a husband and father of five children ranging in age from 24 to 12 - three of whom are in college - said at times the challenge of balancing his family responsibilities and research was "overwhelming."
 
"There were times over the years that I looked at what I was doing and wondered if it was really worth doing because there was no one else who was laying the foundation for me," he confessed. "There was no one ahead of me that I could tap on the shoulder and say 'Hey, is this the right way?' It could be lonely. But I got the greatest strength from my wife and my children. No one ever said to me, 'Pop, why are you doing this? You haven't published a book and have been doing this for twenty-odd years.'"
 
Holmes says that in 2006 and 2007 he came across a "treasure trove" of information about Black inventors throughout the Diaspora. "That was the springboard to push me forward to realize that I'm close to my goal of getting the first book out," he explained.
 
While Holmes' first book covers Black inventors from 1769 to 2007, he is already hard at work on several others.
 
Holmes obviously knows his subject matter very well, speaking with ease and clarity about the contributions of Black inventors like Thomas L. Jennings of Maryland who invented a dry-scouring technique in 1821 used by modern dry cleaners.
 
"It's no surprise that Black folks are into dry-cleaning clothes and that in the 1930s, '40s and 50s we owned our own dry-cleaning businesses," Holmes told The Louisiana Weekly. "I can't say that he was the first inventor to develop the process but he did develop the process and receive a patent for it."
 
Holmes says that it is mind-boggling to think about how technologically advanced the United States might be if it had invested in its people of African descent with increased educational opportunities the way it invested in rebuilding efforts in Japan and Korea after wars with those nations.
 
Incidentally, Japan and South Korea were ranked ahead of the United States in terms of patents granted per 1,000,000 people in 1998. No African nation was ranked among the top 25 countries in terms of patents granted to inventors that year, largely because of neo-colonialism and the fact that African nations were not assisted after colonialism and the slave trade the way Japan and Korea were granted financial assistance.
 
Ironically, without the massive accumulation of wealth made possible by the labor of enslaved Africans, the United States would not have been able to become a global leader or financially assist nations like Japan and Korea.
 
"If the African was not enslaved, and if the African had received the same educational opportunities that every immigrant received and every other person who lived here in the United States received, the United States would be at the forefront of science and technology," Holmes told The Louisiana Weekly.
 
In addition to listing better-known Black inventors like Granville T. Woods, Benjamin Banneker and Garret Morgan, Holmes digs a little deeper and includes lesser-known Black inventors like Ethiopia's Tisafaye Saifferaw, inventor of the Bowflex and Selectech exercise technology.
 
Holmes' next book will tell the stories behind the Black men and women who made many contributions and improved the quality of life people enjoy around the world. He says he looks forward to "putting flesh and bone" on these inventors and helping people to better understand the challenges and obstacles they overcame to carry out their life's work.
 
Holmes is available for lectures on Black inventors and can be reached by email at info@globalblackinventor.com or kcholmes50@gmail.com. To purchase his book or to learn more about Holmes, visit www.globalblackinventor.com.