Speaker 1: On today's episode. If I didn't know, maybe you didn't either.
Speaker 1: It's question what invention single handedly revitalized chattel slavery in
Speaker 1: the United States and who's responsible for its creation? You
Speaker 1: got thirty seconds. I didn't know, Maybe you know. I
Speaker 1: didn't know. Maybe I didn't know. I didn't know. Maybe
Speaker 1: you didn't know. I didn't know. I didn't know. If
Speaker 1: you said the cotton gen created by Eli Whitney, you're correct. See,
Speaker 1: the truth of the matter is, in the late seventeen hundred,
Speaker 1: slavery was phasing out. Folks wasn't making no money off
Speaker 1: ind to go. See, cotton was easy to grow in
Speaker 1: the South, but it was tough to process because you
Speaker 1: had to separate them sticky seeds from the fibers. Well,
Speaker 1: the cotton gen made that process oh so much easier.
Speaker 1: Man After the invention of the cotton gen, the need
Speaker 1: for raw cotton doubled each decade after eighteen I mean
Speaker 1: a few of the other inventions, machines to spin and
Speaker 1: weave the cotton, the steam boat to transport the cot.
Speaker 1: By eighteen fifty, America was growing three quarters of the
Speaker 1: world's supply of cotton, and who were picking it all
Speaker 1: black folk. In seventeen ninety, cotton growing became so profitable
Speaker 1: that it increased the demand for land and enslaved labor.
Speaker 1: In seventeen ninety it was six slave states. By eighteen
Speaker 1: sixty it was fifteen slave states. Now two strange things
Speaker 1: about Eli Whitney. One, why did I always think Eli
Speaker 1: Whitney was black? He's not. Eli Whitney is a white
Speaker 1: man from Massachusetts. Another interesting fact about Eli Whitney is,
Speaker 1: despite having a patent the cotton gin didn't make him
Speaker 1: no bread. I know they had to make him hot. See,
Speaker 1: folks in the South, we just made and used counterfeit versions.
Speaker 1: And Eli Whitney spent most of his time in Southern
Speaker 1: courts fighting, and most times those courts sided with the
Speaker 1: local Southerners rather than some Yankee. Still have no clue.
Speaker 1: While always all the black men invented the cotton gen,
Speaker 1: now there are stories to say an enslaved person invented
Speaker 1: the cotton gen and Eli Whitney got the patent for it,
Speaker 1: but there's no proof of that. It is, however, no
Speaker 1: secret that black folks rarely had the capital or connections
Speaker 1: to get their things patented. So many times their masters
Speaker 1: will take the inventions and be rewarded with the patents.
Speaker 1: Then there were your black folks that got patents by
Speaker 1: making white inventions better or more practical. For example, South
Speaker 1: Carolina native Henry Ogden Holmes, he was black. He invented
Speaker 1: the sawtooth gen around seventeen ninety two when he and
Speaker 1: Eli Whitney were in Savannah, Georgia. The light bulb, we
Speaker 1: all know that was invented by Thomas Edison. But the
Speaker 1: innovation to use longer lasting light bulbs with a carbon
Speaker 1: filament that came from a black man, Lewis Latimer. Look,
Speaker 1: if you're interested in more, you can check out the
Speaker 1: book Black Inventors of America by McKinley Burt Junior. Now
Speaker 1: you won't see Eli Whitney in that book because he's white.
Speaker 1: Don't go and come from the book. And I didn't know.
Speaker 1: Maybe you didn't either. I didn't know. H