Black History Month
Myth Twenty-Six and

Twenty-Seven

All through the month of February we are instructed to celebrate Black History. We are going to do that by correcting some of the myths circulated throughout the month of February. Each day there will be another entry of the myths of black inventions.It appears the attitude of many people in our country are the same as those of the commenter on this blog a few days ago who stated, “Robb its pathetic you try to deny other races inventions(whether they invented it or not).” I guess this person doesn’t care about the truth.Actually, I am not trying to deny anybody anything, just correcting some myths that are circulated by anti-White zealots.

Did many Negroes hold patents - yes - but a patent is not an invention. Only the uneducated confuse the two.For the record, I am not the author of the following.

Did Negroes P. Downing and George Beckett invent
the Postal Mail Drop Box and the personal mail box.
They SURE DID - not!

The US Postal Service says that "Street boxes for mail collection began to appear in large [US] cities by 1858." They appeared in Europe even earlier, according to historian Laurin Zilliacus:
Mail boxes as we understand them first appeared on the streets of Belgian towns in 1848. In Paris they came two years later, while the English received their 'pillar boxes' in 1855.
Laurin Zilliacus, Mail for the World, p. 178 (New York, J. Day Co., 1953)
From the same book (p.178), "Private mail boxes were invented in the United States in about 1860."
Eventually, letter drop boxes came equipped with inner lids to prevent miscreants from rummaging through the mail pile. The first of many US patents for such a purpose was granted in 1860 to John North of Middletown, Connecticut (US Pat. #27466). See http://www.ehow.com/facts_5601864_history-mail-boxes.html

To help us have clean homes
Negro Thomas Stewart invented
The Mop in 1893!
Actually this one is TRUE- He
Did invent the mop!
Ok! It’s a joke - he didn’t do it!

Mops go back a long, long way before 1893. Just how long, is hard to determine. Restricting our view to the modern era, we find that the United States issued its first mop patent (#241) in 1837 to Jacob Howe, called "Construction of Mop-Heads and the Mode of Securing them upon Handles." One of the first patented mops with a built-in wringer was the one H. & J. Morton invented in 1859 (US #24049).
The mop specified in Stewart's patent #499402 has a lever-operated clamp for "holding the mop rags"; the lever is not a wringing mechanism as erroneously reported on certain websites. Other inventors had already patented mops with lever-operated clamps, one of the first being Greenleaf Stackpole in 1869 (US Pat. #89803). See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mop