While visiting the new National Museum of African American History and Culture on Thursday, I came across an under-appreciated section of the museum.
The section, called “Making a Way Out of No Way,” focuses on the accomplishments of several African-Americans who overcame long odds to reach the top of their fields (including neurosurgeon and former Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson).
Several African-American entrepreneurs and inventors are featured in the exhibit.
There’s Henry Boyd, who was born into slavery but eventually created his own high-quality furniture shop in the 1800s. I don’t think the exhibit mentioned this, but Boyd employed both blacks and whites in his shop.
There is Howard Smith, who ran the Pacific Parachute Company, which helped supply the military during World War II. Again, I don’t think the exhibit mentioned that he employed blacks and whites.
There is also James Wormley, who ran a hotel in Washington, D.C., where members of Congress often stayed during the post-Civil War Reconstruction Era.
Garrett Morgan, who saved countless lives by inventing a fire safety hood that made it easy for firefighters to walk in smoke-filled rooms, is also featured. Morgan personally saved several lives using the hood to save workers trapped in a tunnel beneath Lake Erie. Morgan also invented various hair care products and a traffic light that has three signals.
There is Mae Reeves (who’s still alive at 104 years old), who opened a hat shop in Philadelphia in the 1940s — hats, the exhibit says, that were enjoyed by black and white women alike.
The museum also honors Booker T. Washington and his role in encouraging African-American entrepreneurship and his founding of the National Negro Business League.
These great Americans did fantastic work to improve the living standards and daily lives of not just African-Americans but people around the country and in some cases around the globe. As the museum grows, it should expand the exhibit to include more African-American inventors and entrepreneurs.
It’s possible I missed it, but I saw no mention of George Washington Carver at the museum. Carver was responsible for vast improvements in agricultural techniques during his lifetime. Although Carver didn’t invent peanut butter, he did extensive research with peanuts (this was very important to me during my childhood, when I ate a peanut butter sandwich for lunch almost every day). In 1941, Time magazine described him as a black Leonardo da Vinci.
As for more modern times, the museum is wise to honor Oprah Winfrey and all she’s done for the country as an entrepreneur and philanthropist. But it should also honor people like Robert F. Smith, the second-richest African-American, after Oprah, who founded Vista Equity Partners, which has grown into a huge private equity firm. It should also honor people like Reginald Lewis, who was worth hundreds of millions of dollars and owned the first black-owned company to have $1 billion in annual sales.
To be clear, I am not trying to downplay the important achievements of African-Americans who fought for emancipation, civil rights and justice. They rightly get much of the attention at the museum.
One small critique for the museum: Whenever mentioning the accomplishments of African-American entrepreneurs, it seemed to note how those accomplishments benefitted the African-American community.
But this minimizes their positive impact. Those listed above didn’t just help people that looked like them, they had a broader reach. That’s something worth celebrating.
Jason Russell is a commentary writer for the Washington Examiner.
