Two important volumes have recently been published that explore the intersection of race and innovation. Bruce Sinclair's Technology and the African American Experience: Needs and Opportunities for Study and Rayvon Fouché's Black Inventors in the Age of Segregation point to misrepresentation that comes in two opposing forms: under-studied achievement in technology and exaggeration or distortion of achievement in technology, both of which are driven by considerations of race. In essence, the objective of both volumes is to begin to set the record straight.

The Sinclair volume is focused on an under-studied presence in the history of technology. In the introduction he suggests that inventiveness among African Americans over time often related to ordinary life, for instance inventions by slaves in the course of their everyday work, and has, therefore, been often overlooked. The collection covers an eclectic, wide range of topics—from fisheries to industrial and engineering education to the automobile—and media, including contemporary cartoons about invention and little-known photographs of operations and research at Tuskegee Institute in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The article by Portia James on innovation and invention would likely be considered a traditional summary of African American contributions to technical change. Nonetheless, it contains more insights than the standard article of its type and is a balanced treatment of patented and unpatented inventions. Although all the papers are interesting, a few others would be of particular interest to economic historians.

Nina Lerman uses 1904–1905 expenditure data from Hampton Institute (Hampton, Virginia) and Tuskegee Institute (Tuskegee, Alabama) from the Rockefeller Foundation's General Education Board Archives and data from the Institute of Colored Youth (ICY) archives to demonstrate the counterintuitive finding that industrial education for African Americans at the turn of the last century was more technologically intensive and helpful for labor force development in the technologically backward South than in the industrial North. Although the three institutes were all reported to provide practical technical education for blacks, the data suggest that the model northern school's resources shifted away from trades training towards teacher training whereas the southern schools directed resources at engineering and technical education, more generally. The ICY's “industrial school” in Cheyney, Pennsylvania developed a curriculum that emphasized woodwork and basic metalwork and offered its first electricity course in 1911. Tuskegee's curriculum stressed mechanical and architectural drawing (taught by an MIT-trained architect) and the workings of steam engines and electric plants, and it offered its first electricity course in 1898. In Lerman's analysis, Booker T. Washington's vision and actions are revisited. While publicly espousing training for blacks to fit into the marginalized southern labor force, Tuskegee programs in fact targeted training in skilled, technology-intensive trades.

Judith Carney brings agronomic and geographic data and recent research in a number of disciplines to bear on the debate surrounding technology transfer by African-born slaves in rice cultivation during the colonial period. Her work demonstrates that, in addition to providing labor, previously believed to be the chief if not the sole contribution of slaves, Africans settling in South Carolina also provided the technology that formed the basis for rice cultivation, the foundation of the colonial South Carolinian economy.

Most importantly for those planning to pursue the opportunities for research presented in this collection, the bibliography of technology and the African American experience compiled by Amy Sue Bix is well-organized and comprehensive. Works referred to in the volume's other papers are listed and in some cases described; but many others, particularly new publications, are mentioned and reviewed, as well.

This volume is rich and diverse. At the same time, it could have been enhanced by more discussion of the larger context. Questions this research might have addressed or may address in the future are: Is the historically contentious relation between race and technology specific to the United States? Do we observe the same patterns in other societies with a history of slavery, e.g., Russia, Brazil, or ancient Greece? That is, have the innovative outcomes and the treatment of these outcomes been different across geography and over time? Are there similarities with respect to the relations between other races and technology or between genders and technology? In this sense, the work lives up to its title in revealing many opportunities for future research in the history of technology.

Rayvon Fouché's book considers the intersection of race and innovation by addressing not only the understudied but, more importantly, the wrongly or incompletely studied. Extraordinary qualities of mythic proportions have often been assigned to black inventors, he argues, as a cultural symbol of achievement under the most difficult circumstances in the elite and segregated realm of invention. Much about the relations among race, technology, and American identity can be learned by examining these myths and from the study of the actual lives of inventors rather than from their mythologized versions.

To this end, he first debunks four urban myths: patents imply financial success, black inventors invented to uplift the race, any object or process patented by a black inventor was the first of its kind, and racism uniformly affected black inventors. Although these claims would be viewed as suspect by historians of technology or economic historians, they are widely accepted among a wider group of readers, and exposing them as false or exaggerated is an appropriate starting point.

Fouché then selects two well-known inventors' and one relatively obscure inventor's stories to retell: Granville T. Woods, Lewis H. Latimer, and Shelby J. Davidson. Each case is used as evidence to support the arguments he invokes to rectify the aforementioned myths.

It is fitting that Fouché begins with Woods, who obtained 45 patents largely related to electricity between 1884 and 1907, who has become known as the “black Edison,” and whose life has been assigned exaggerated or misleading attributes in the most minute ways, including with respect to his place of birth (Australia). He carefully reconstructs Woods's complicated history using a mixture of primary sources, primarily testimony from patent cases related to his inventions, and secondary sources. In doing so, he elucidates relations with patent attorneys, draftsmen, other inventors, investors in his inventive activities, financiers of the Woods Electric Company, and firms and individuals to which he assigned patents. Ultimately, the role that race played in these relations is inconclusive: Woods was viewed both as “just another Negro” and as an exception by his counterparts, and the impact of either assumption is unclear. Further, and somewhat confusingly, the author is ambivalent about the quality of Woods's inventive success.

Lewis Latimer was the draftsman for Alexander Graham Bell's telephone patent and a member of “Edison's Pioneers,” Edison's research team. Among other sources, Latimer's writings, including a logbook, provide insights that Fouché uses to shed light on the intersection of race, technology, and identity. Fouché attributes Latimer's success at the apex of inventive and entrepreneurial activities to his assimilationist or raceless world view. His deep and overlapping corporate connections in the electrical light community, argues Fouché, were a more important constraint on his inventive activities than race.

Davidson of Washington, D.C., was an employee of the Post Office of the Treasury Department and patented inventions for adding machines. His technology was inspired by his work and applied in the Post Office Division, he was promoted to a supervisory position, and he was accorded elite status within the African American community, which he embraced. Fouché finds that, once segregation became institutionalized in the federal government, Davidson's technological know-how, position, and salary were questioned by senior management. Further, he was relegated to one of two segregated rooms and demoted to menial work. Race began to dominate his interactions with his superiors and to circumscribe his inventive activities. As a result, Davidson resigned from the Post Office in 1912.

This is a Herculean effort, and these biographies succeed in showing that race, technology, and American identity have been inextricably intertwined. Nonetheless, although Fouché's criticism of widely held myths is defensible and well argued, he also perpetuates another myth: patented inventions are the best indicator of inventive activity. By selecting only patentees, Fouché's pool and analysis are limited to inventors who had likely already overcome significant racial and other barriers. A more balanced sample might have included inventors without patents, such as Benjamin Montgomery, the inventive slave of Jefferson Davis's brother, or Madame C.~J. Walker, who relied upon trade secrets rather than patents to protect her own inventions. In essence, the reader would like to know: Was race a determinant in the choice of property-rights protection in the age of segregation? Did this choice change as the property-rights environment changed during the age of segregation? Further, the author suggests that many, if not most, of the inventions mentioned were marginal or had limited applicability. Was the nexus of race, technology, and identity configured differently for African American inventors who had important and widely applied inventions during this period? To this end, it may have been useful to include an inventor, such as Garrett Morgan, the inventor of the modern-day traffic light and gas mask, in the sample, as well. These weaknesses notwithstanding, this richly documented research is significant, because it augments our understanding of invention and inventors' lives during this period and it raises important questions.