March 27, 2025 • 15 mins
Dr. Vanessa Tyler has an enlightening conversation with James Howard, inventor and executive director of the Black Inventors Hall Of Fame Museum and STEAM Center. The project will be a 110,000 sq ft. facility in New Jersey that includes tuition-free STEM classrooms, a theater and a hall dedicated to top Black inventors of the Golden Era. James discuss the importance of representation and the value of preserving untold stories of inventors of color, especially in underserved communities.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
The amount of brain power in this room right now
is astonishing.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
The White House the year twenty sixteen, the President Obama
and the brilliant black woman in the room, Shirley and Jackson.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
Shirleyanne Jackson, who is part of my Science Advisory Group,
grew up right here in Washington, DC. Hers was a
quiet childhood. Her first homemade experiment involved I understand collecting
in catalog bumblebees in her backyard.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
Beyond the backyard curiosity of a little black girl, a
black woman who grew into an American inventor.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
She went on to become the first African American to
earn a doctor in physics from MIT, the second woman
to do so anywhere in America, and over the years,
doctor Jackson has revolutionized the way science informs public policy,
from rethinking safety at our nuclear to training a new
generation of scientists and engineers that looks more like the
(01:05):
diverse and inclusive America that she loves.
Speaker 2 (01:08):
Her inventions were revolutionary. Her research at the former Bell
Labs led to the perfection of communication technology we enjoy today,
like the touchtone phone call, her ID call waiting. She
is just one inventor. Black America is full of them
so much black genius. Somebody needs to put it in
(01:30):
a museum. Now, somebody will take your first tour in
black Land and now as a brown person, you just
feel so invisible and where we're from. Brothers and sisters.
I welcome you to this joyful Exayle. We celebrate freedom.
Speaker 3 (01:47):
Where we are, I know someone's heard something.
Speaker 2 (01:52):
And where we're going. We the people means all the people.
The Black Information Network presents Blackland with your holes. Vanessa Tyler.
Speaker 4 (02:02):
We've ended the journey of so called diversity, equity, and
inclusion policies all across the entire federal government and indeed
the private center at our military.
Speaker 2 (02:16):
As President Trump scrubs black achievement from government websites, pressures
corporations to drop diversity and inclusion, and makes clear black
achievement is not an American priority. Our top three will
be woke no longer. What James Howard is doing becomes
(02:36):
more important now than ever. He is building the Black
Inventors Hall of Fame, a museum and STEM center to
be built in West Orange, New Jersey, dedicated to black inventors.
Speaker 3 (02:48):
Thank you, Vanessa, I appreciate you having me on board.
Speaker 2 (02:51):
Tell us about the museum.
Speaker 3 (02:53):
The museum has been a journey for the last five years.
Our in bituous story is one that residentates deeply within
us all. It is a narrative that deserves to be
celebrated and shared, reflecting the heart and soul of our
creativity and resilience.
Speaker 2 (03:12):
Why, especially now, is such a museum needed with.
Speaker 3 (03:15):
Present day climate everyday headlines our story is in fact
under the threat and we need to push back. And
the museum will be a large one hundred and seven
thousand square foot megatropolis of a building that will in
(03:36):
fact allow us to a larger bullhorn and will allow
us to do just that, push back and remind our
country of the importance of these stories to be told
as we move forward.
Speaker 2 (03:52):
What kind of artifacts have you collected?
Speaker 3 (03:55):
Oh, that's a great question. I'm in the midst of
collecting artifacts right now. To speak. I have collected everything
from an Alfred Krell ice cream school dispenser. Alfred Krell
was the African American who invented the ice cream school
that easily dispenses the ice cream from the bowl of
(04:16):
the school. I have collected an Ellen Egglin close ringer.
That's me. Who Ellen Eglin is? She is the Washington
d c. Domestic servant who sold her ingenious invention for
eighteen dollars. And her invention was a recognized closed ringer
(04:37):
that revolutionized that entire laundry industry, and she sold it
for eighteen dollars having fear of getting a patent on it.
And she feared that because she says, you know, I'm black,
and had been known that a colored woman invented this product,
(04:57):
white women would not have purchased it. That is a
direct call from Ellen Eglan. But here's the sad thing.
She solt of eighteen dollars, But the white agent that
she sold it to made countless numbers of money because
he licensed the rights to manufacture it to an untold
number of manufacturers.
Speaker 2 (05:18):
It wasn't easy for black inventors with whites stealing their ideas.
Speaker 3 (05:24):
Elijah J. McCoy knocked on many doors attempting to sell
his automatic lubricating cup, and everyone said, oh, I'm not interested,
And yet every other president said no, The next person
simply made it themselves. There were so many knockoffs of
Elijah jamiecoy's lubricating cup that he decided that he was
(05:46):
going to make his own so he opened up his
own manufacturing facility, the Elijah J. McCoy Manufacturing Company, and
he started making his own lubricating cobs. So much so
was his product so superior to all of the knockhoffs
that when people in the know will go to the
Harvard Store to purchase a lubricating valve, they will stop
(06:08):
the salesman and say, oh, and make sure it's the
real McCoy.
Speaker 2 (06:14):
The museum will feature an initial one hundred black inventors.
Charles Frederick Page will be one of them.
Speaker 3 (06:20):
Charles Frederick Page is the enslaved man who raised thirteen kids,
was self talk and was a master carpon, and he
had the audacity to dream big, so big that he
thought he would be the first man in the country
to put man into flight. And he was sharing this
dream at the exact same time that the Right Brothers
(06:43):
were having their dream. But the untold story is such
that Charles Frederick Page got a patent on this airship
forty two days before the Right Brothers attained their pet
and he shipped his airship off to Louisiana's welfare, and
it disappeared, it never arrived. So I am building a
(07:08):
full sized repeta Charles Frederick Page's airship, and families can
come and take a ride on the airship, an immersive
experience ride where you position yourself and you can only
imagine go through this virtual, immersive experience of what Charles
Frederick Page had in mind well over one hundred years ago,
(07:30):
and I'm working with his grandson on this particular initiative.
Speaker 2 (07:35):
James Howard will divide the Black Inventor's Hall of Fame
Museum inductees into four segments.
Speaker 3 (07:42):
We will curate our brothers and sisters who have made
tremendous contributions, and medical science and health science arena. We
will curate the story of all those who have made
tremendous contributions, and the Telecommunications and Technology arena, and then
inspectation and euro Space technology, and lastly agricultural products and
(08:05):
consumer goods. We're going to reach all the way back
four hundred years, So those one hundred stories will reach
back from today all the way back four hundred years,
and it will include what I genuinely regard as our
first Black innovator, that was Onessemus. Honesmus was the African
(08:26):
American slave man who helped to save the town of
Boston from the ravishes of smallpox, right, and when you
read his story, you go on to learn that in
many respects, he was the father of modern day vaccines.
Speaker 2 (08:41):
What's so maddening to him is how America tries to
dismiss black brilliance.
Speaker 3 (08:47):
This has been too significant to sequester, It is too
important to ignore, and it is too profound to push aside.
Speaker 2 (08:57):
Tell us about your background.
Speaker 3 (08:59):
I'm a lifelong educator. I have been teaching at the
collegiate level for more than thirty five years. I'm also
an inventor. I have twenty plus patents, and I'm regarded
as a historian as I've been leturing on black inventors
all over twenty years.
Speaker 2 (09:18):
What are some of your inventions.
Speaker 3 (09:21):
I have designed everything from walking aids to feeding aids,
to cardiovascular delivery systems, and one of the inventions that
I'm most proud of is a neo natal pressure relief
vouve that I designed to help resuscitate infants at birth.
(09:42):
So that gives you somewhat of an idea of the
range of products that I have invented, most of them
in the medical arena, but I've also done household products.
As well.
Speaker 2 (09:53):
One of his household products may be in your bathroom
a con Air blow dryer.
Speaker 3 (09:59):
A con blow dryer that I designed back in the
nineties early nineties. This was a round lollipop shaped blow
dryer that, interestingly enough, was claimed by a white competitor.
Right and then when I found out that it was
(10:20):
being claimed by a white competitor, I told the engineer
who wanted to give me a project. I told him,
I say, Anthony, listen, I have proved that I'm the
only designer of this particular blow dryer. I can sing
you a copy of the patent. Well after I faxed
him a copy of the patent, he looks at it
(10:40):
and he tells me this over the phone. He says, James,
I see you have all the goods. But the truth
of the matter is I don't know who to believe. Ultimately,
what happened. I found out two years later just who
this individual was, and I confronted him and he apologized.
He gave me some cocky mini story about how this
(11:02):
engineer somehow mistaken we thought that he had placed this
item on his mental his office. But the truth of
the matter is that is an example of what black
inventors have endured for the last four hundred years. Our
credibility has always been under attacked. Our intellectual prowess has
(11:24):
always been under.
Speaker 2 (11:25):
Tack, Howard says. Even the brilliant Benjamin Banneker, you know,
the clock inventor, there are those who doubt him.
Speaker 3 (11:33):
Benjamin Banneker, whose contributions to this day remains under attacked
by pundits. Right, everything he's achieved from designing one of
the country's first all woulden't makegnized clops to the work
that he did, and genius work he did in his
own almanac. Everything this man did even to this day
(11:53):
has been diminished and remains under attack. And he was
our first spokesperson in this country to write a letter
to the then Secretary of State, Thomas Jefferson, advocating on
behalf of dismissing this nonsense about blacks being intellectually inferior
(12:15):
to their white counterparts. Benjamin Baker thirteen page letter to
Thomas Jefferson. And you can find that in the Smithsonian Institute.
Speaker 2 (12:25):
I hope you have a copy in your museum as well.
Speaker 3 (12:28):
Oh, you better believe I will. We have cases in
examples of not only our original ideas being stolen, but
also even those ideas that we have improved upon, we
have examples of those also being misdirected and aligned with
(12:50):
that of white inventives. And the best case scenario I
want to give you is that of Andrew Beard. Andrew Beard,
it's a black man that had invented and improved train
company device, and that is the device that is used
for trains to butt together and be a joint very
(13:11):
quickly and rapidly and seamlessly. He invented this product forty
plus years after the original inventner gentleman by the name
of Jenny. But Jenny's device wasn't anywhere near what Andrew
Beard had ingeniously designed. And to this day, it is
(13:31):
Andrew Beard's design that pretty much is the state of
the art and that has been used for over one
hundred years, and yet it is still referred to as
wait on this the Jenny coupler. So the Black and
Winner's Hall of Fame Museum wants to help correct these
narratives so that our brothers insistance of the past and
(13:52):
present can be adequately credited for their amazing work.
Speaker 2 (13:57):
How can we learn more?
Speaker 3 (13:59):
You can learn more by going to our website. We do,
in fact have a website that allows the public to
stay abreast of our progress on the building of the museum.
If all goes well, the museum will be open in
late twenty twenty seven. Right now, we have a virtual
(14:19):
presence and that website is b I h O F
dot org as Black Inventors Hall of Fame b I
h OF dot org O RG. And you can also
you know, if any anyone in your audience is interested
(14:42):
in helping to support our calls, you'll be led to
our page that we're presently involved in with our capitol
building campaign, and you can make contributions there and or
send us suggestions for inventors who you would like to
see in our next round of inventors and our as
(15:03):
we induct our next round of inventors into the Black
and Vennis Hall of Fame.
Speaker 2 (15:08):
James Howard, thank you for letting us know the brilliance
in our history and our future.
Speaker 3 (15:14):
Thank you Andnessa. I appreciate it.
Speaker 2 (15:17):
Join me for a new episode of Blackland. Be sure
to like and subscribe. I'd love to get your feedback
on Instagram at Vanessa Tyler one
The amount of brain power in this room right now
is astonishing.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
The White House the year twenty sixteen, the President Obama
and the brilliant black woman in the room, Shirley and Jackson.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
Shirleyanne Jackson, who is part of my Science Advisory Group,
grew up right here in Washington, DC. Hers was a
quiet childhood. Her first homemade experiment involved I understand collecting
in catalog bumblebees in her backyard.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
Beyond the backyard curiosity of a little black girl, a
black woman who grew into an American inventor.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
She went on to become the first African American to
earn a doctor in physics from MIT, the second woman
to do so anywhere in America, and over the years,
doctor Jackson has revolutionized the way science informs public policy,
from rethinking safety at our nuclear to training a new
generation of scientists and engineers that looks more like the
(01:05):
diverse and inclusive America that she loves.
Speaker 2 (01:08):
Her inventions were revolutionary. Her research at the former Bell
Labs led to the perfection of communication technology we enjoy today,
like the touchtone phone call, her ID call waiting. She
is just one inventor. Black America is full of them
so much black genius. Somebody needs to put it in
(01:30):
a museum. Now, somebody will take your first tour in
black Land and now as a brown person, you just
feel so invisible and where we're from. Brothers and sisters.
I welcome you to this joyful Exayle. We celebrate freedom.
Speaker 3 (01:47):
Where we are, I know someone's heard something.
Speaker 2 (01:52):
And where we're going. We the people means all the people.
The Black Information Network presents Blackland with your holes. Vanessa Tyler.
Speaker 4 (02:02):
We've ended the journey of so called diversity, equity, and
inclusion policies all across the entire federal government and indeed
the private center at our military.
Speaker 2 (02:16):
As President Trump scrubs black achievement from government websites, pressures
corporations to drop diversity and inclusion, and makes clear black
achievement is not an American priority. Our top three will
be woke no longer. What James Howard is doing becomes
(02:36):
more important now than ever. He is building the Black
Inventors Hall of Fame, a museum and STEM center to
be built in West Orange, New Jersey, dedicated to black inventors.
Speaker 3 (02:48):
Thank you, Vanessa, I appreciate you having me on board.
Speaker 2 (02:51):
Tell us about the museum.
Speaker 3 (02:53):
The museum has been a journey for the last five years.
Our in bituous story is one that residentates deeply within
us all. It is a narrative that deserves to be
celebrated and shared, reflecting the heart and soul of our
creativity and resilience.
Speaker 2 (03:12):
Why, especially now, is such a museum needed with.
Speaker 3 (03:15):
Present day climate everyday headlines our story is in fact
under the threat and we need to push back. And
the museum will be a large one hundred and seven
thousand square foot megatropolis of a building that will in
(03:36):
fact allow us to a larger bullhorn and will allow
us to do just that, push back and remind our
country of the importance of these stories to be told
as we move forward.
Speaker 2 (03:52):
What kind of artifacts have you collected?
Speaker 3 (03:55):
Oh, that's a great question. I'm in the midst of
collecting artifacts right now. To speak. I have collected everything
from an Alfred Krell ice cream school dispenser. Alfred Krell
was the African American who invented the ice cream school
that easily dispenses the ice cream from the bowl of
(04:16):
the school. I have collected an Ellen Egglin close ringer.
That's me. Who Ellen Eglin is? She is the Washington
d c. Domestic servant who sold her ingenious invention for
eighteen dollars. And her invention was a recognized closed ringer
(04:37):
that revolutionized that entire laundry industry, and she sold it
for eighteen dollars having fear of getting a patent on it.
And she feared that because she says, you know, I'm black,
and had been known that a colored woman invented this product,
(04:57):
white women would not have purchased it. That is a
direct call from Ellen Eglan. But here's the sad thing.
She solt of eighteen dollars, But the white agent that
she sold it to made countless numbers of money because
he licensed the rights to manufacture it to an untold
number of manufacturers.
Speaker 2 (05:18):
It wasn't easy for black inventors with whites stealing their ideas.
Speaker 3 (05:24):
Elijah J. McCoy knocked on many doors attempting to sell
his automatic lubricating cup, and everyone said, oh, I'm not interested,
And yet every other president said no, The next person
simply made it themselves. There were so many knockoffs of
Elijah jamiecoy's lubricating cup that he decided that he was
(05:46):
going to make his own so he opened up his
own manufacturing facility, the Elijah J. McCoy Manufacturing Company, and
he started making his own lubricating cobs. So much so
was his product so superior to all of the knockhoffs
that when people in the know will go to the
Harvard Store to purchase a lubricating valve, they will stop
(06:08):
the salesman and say, oh, and make sure it's the
real McCoy.
Speaker 2 (06:14):
The museum will feature an initial one hundred black inventors.
Charles Frederick Page will be one of them.
Speaker 3 (06:20):
Charles Frederick Page is the enslaved man who raised thirteen kids,
was self talk and was a master carpon, and he
had the audacity to dream big, so big that he
thought he would be the first man in the country
to put man into flight. And he was sharing this
dream at the exact same time that the Right Brothers
(06:43):
were having their dream. But the untold story is such
that Charles Frederick Page got a patent on this airship
forty two days before the Right Brothers attained their pet
and he shipped his airship off to Louisiana's welfare, and
it disappeared, it never arrived. So I am building a
(07:08):
full sized repeta Charles Frederick Page's airship, and families can
come and take a ride on the airship, an immersive
experience ride where you position yourself and you can only
imagine go through this virtual, immersive experience of what Charles
Frederick Page had in mind well over one hundred years ago,
(07:30):
and I'm working with his grandson on this particular initiative.
Speaker 2 (07:35):
James Howard will divide the Black Inventor's Hall of Fame
Museum inductees into four segments.
Speaker 3 (07:42):
We will curate our brothers and sisters who have made
tremendous contributions, and medical science and health science arena. We
will curate the story of all those who have made
tremendous contributions, and the Telecommunications and Technology arena, and then
inspectation and euro Space technology, and lastly agricultural products and
(08:05):
consumer goods. We're going to reach all the way back
four hundred years, So those one hundred stories will reach
back from today all the way back four hundred years,
and it will include what I genuinely regard as our
first Black innovator, that was Onessemus. Honesmus was the African
(08:26):
American slave man who helped to save the town of
Boston from the ravishes of smallpox, right, and when you
read his story, you go on to learn that in
many respects, he was the father of modern day vaccines.
Speaker 2 (08:41):
What's so maddening to him is how America tries to
dismiss black brilliance.
Speaker 3 (08:47):
This has been too significant to sequester, It is too
important to ignore, and it is too profound to push aside.
Speaker 2 (08:57):
Tell us about your background.
Speaker 3 (08:59):
I'm a lifelong educator. I have been teaching at the
collegiate level for more than thirty five years. I'm also
an inventor. I have twenty plus patents, and I'm regarded
as a historian as I've been leturing on black inventors
all over twenty years.
Speaker 2 (09:18):
What are some of your inventions.
Speaker 3 (09:21):
I have designed everything from walking aids to feeding aids,
to cardiovascular delivery systems, and one of the inventions that
I'm most proud of is a neo natal pressure relief
vouve that I designed to help resuscitate infants at birth.
(09:42):
So that gives you somewhat of an idea of the
range of products that I have invented, most of them
in the medical arena, but I've also done household products.
As well.
Speaker 2 (09:53):
One of his household products may be in your bathroom
a con Air blow dryer.
Speaker 3 (09:59):
A con blow dryer that I designed back in the
nineties early nineties. This was a round lollipop shaped blow
dryer that, interestingly enough, was claimed by a white competitor.
Right and then when I found out that it was
(10:20):
being claimed by a white competitor, I told the engineer
who wanted to give me a project. I told him,
I say, Anthony, listen, I have proved that I'm the
only designer of this particular blow dryer. I can sing
you a copy of the patent. Well after I faxed
him a copy of the patent, he looks at it
(10:40):
and he tells me this over the phone. He says, James,
I see you have all the goods. But the truth
of the matter is I don't know who to believe. Ultimately,
what happened. I found out two years later just who
this individual was, and I confronted him and he apologized.
He gave me some cocky mini story about how this
(11:02):
engineer somehow mistaken we thought that he had placed this
item on his mental his office. But the truth of
the matter is that is an example of what black
inventors have endured for the last four hundred years. Our
credibility has always been under attacked. Our intellectual prowess has
(11:24):
always been under.
Speaker 2 (11:25):
Tack, Howard says. Even the brilliant Benjamin Banneker, you know,
the clock inventor, there are those who doubt him.
Speaker 3 (11:33):
Benjamin Banneker, whose contributions to this day remains under attacked
by pundits. Right, everything he's achieved from designing one of
the country's first all woulden't makegnized clops to the work
that he did, and genius work he did in his
own almanac. Everything this man did even to this day
(11:53):
has been diminished and remains under attack. And he was
our first spokesperson in this country to write a letter
to the then Secretary of State, Thomas Jefferson, advocating on
behalf of dismissing this nonsense about blacks being intellectually inferior
(12:15):
to their white counterparts. Benjamin Baker thirteen page letter to
Thomas Jefferson. And you can find that in the Smithsonian Institute.
Speaker 2 (12:25):
I hope you have a copy in your museum as well.
Speaker 3 (12:28):
Oh, you better believe I will. We have cases in
examples of not only our original ideas being stolen, but
also even those ideas that we have improved upon, we
have examples of those also being misdirected and aligned with
(12:50):
that of white inventives. And the best case scenario I
want to give you is that of Andrew Beard. Andrew Beard,
it's a black man that had invented and improved train
company device, and that is the device that is used
for trains to butt together and be a joint very
(13:11):
quickly and rapidly and seamlessly. He invented this product forty
plus years after the original inventner gentleman by the name
of Jenny. But Jenny's device wasn't anywhere near what Andrew
Beard had ingeniously designed. And to this day, it is
(13:31):
Andrew Beard's design that pretty much is the state of
the art and that has been used for over one
hundred years, and yet it is still referred to as
wait on this the Jenny coupler. So the Black and
Winner's Hall of Fame Museum wants to help correct these
narratives so that our brothers insistance of the past and
(13:52):
present can be adequately credited for their amazing work.
Speaker 2 (13:57):
How can we learn more?
Speaker 3 (13:59):
You can learn more by going to our website. We do,
in fact have a website that allows the public to
stay abreast of our progress on the building of the museum.
If all goes well, the museum will be open in
late twenty twenty seven. Right now, we have a virtual
(14:19):
presence and that website is b I h O F
dot org as Black Inventors Hall of Fame b I
h OF dot org O RG. And you can also
you know, if any anyone in your audience is interested
(14:42):
in helping to support our calls, you'll be led to
our page that we're presently involved in with our capitol
building campaign, and you can make contributions there and or
send us suggestions for inventors who you would like to
see in our next round of inventors and our as
(15:03):
we induct our next round of inventors into the Black
and Vennis Hall of Fame.
Speaker 2 (15:08):
James Howard, thank you for letting us know the brilliance
in our history and our future.
Speaker 3 (15:14):
Thank you Andnessa. I appreciate it.
Speaker 2 (15:17):
Join me for a new episode of Blackland. Be sure
to like and subscribe. I'd love to get your feedback
on Instagram at Vanessa Tyler one
Host
Vanessa Tyler
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