A Hammer in Their Hands: A Documentary History of Technology and the African-American Experience (Hardcover)

Description:

Scholars working at the intersection of African-American history and the history of technology are redefining the idea of technology to include the work of the skilled artisan and the ingenuity of the self-taught inventor. Although denied access through most of American history to many new technologies and to the privileged education of the engineer, African-Americans have been engaged with a range of technologies, as makers and as users, since the colonial era. A Hammer in Their Hands (the title comes from the famous song about John Henry, "the steel-driving man" who beat the steam drill) collects newspaper and magazine articles, advertisements for runaway slaves, letters, folklore, excerpts from biography and fiction, legal patents, protest pamphlets, and other primary sources to document the technological achievements of African-Americans.

Included in this rich and varied collection are a letter from Cotton Mather describing an early method of smallpox inoculation brought from Africa by a slave; selections from Frederick Douglass's autobiography and Uncle Tom's Cabin; the Confederate Patent Act, which barred slaves from holding patents; articles from 1904 by Booker T. Washington and W. E. B. DuBois, debating the issue of industrial education for African-Americans; a 1924 article from Negro World, "Automobiles and Jim Crow Regulations"; a photograph of an all-black World War II combat squadron; and a 1998 presidential executive order on environmental justice. A Hammer in Their Hands and its companion volume of essays, Technology and the African-American Experience (MIT Press, 2004) will be essential references in an emerging area of study.

Carroll Pursell is Adjunct Professor of Modern History at Macquarie University, Australia.

 

Table of Contents:

Introduction	xi
I	Colonial Era	1
1	African Medicine in the New World	3
	Cotton Mather on Smallpox Inoculation (1716)	5
	An Account of the Method and Success of Inoculating the Small-Pox in Boston (1722)	6
2	New World Skills	7
	Runaway Slave Advertisements	9
	A Profile of Runaway Slaves in Virginia and South Carolina from 1730 through 1787 Lathan Algerna Windley	12
	Advertisement for a Fugitive Slave (1769) Thomas Jefferson	14
	Letter from Benjamin Banneker to the Secretary of State, with His Answer (1792) Benjamin Banneker and Thomas Jefferson	15
II	Antebellum Years	21
3	The Persistence of Craft	23
	Advertisements for Runaway Slaves in Virginia, 1801-1820 Daniel Meaders	25
	Life and Times of Frederick Douglass (1882) Frederick Douglass	29
	The Fugitive Blacksmith; or, Events in the History of James W, C. Pennington	37
	Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852) Harriet Beecher Stowe	40
	A Journey in the Slave States (1856) and A Journey in the Back Country (1861) Frederick Law Olmsted	44
	His Promised Land: The Autobiography of John P. Parker, Former Slave and Conductor on the Underground Railroad John P. Parker	49
	Layout of Parker's Phoenix Foundry (1884)	54
	U.S. Patent to John Percial Parker for a Soil-Pulverizer (1890)	55
	Tending a Cotton Gin (1853)	58
4	The New Industrial Age	59
	Notes on North America, Agricultural, Economical, and Social (1851) James F. W. Johnston	61
	Scenes from Oak Lawn, Lousiana Plantation (1864)	64
	Slave Labor as Reported in Nile's Weekly Register (1849) and DeBow's Southern and Western Review (1851)	66
	The History of the First Locomotives in America (1874) William H. Brown	71
	Advertisement in The Liberator Seeking Colored Inventors (1834)	74
	U.S. Patent to Norbert Rillieux for an "Improvement in Sugar-Works" (1843)	75
	U.S. Patent to Norbert Rillieux for an "Improvement in Sugar-Making" (1846)	87
	The Confederate Patent Act (1861)	89
III	War, Reconstruction, and Segregation	91
5	Finding a Place in the Industrial Age	93
	Mechanism and Art (1873)	95
	Using Jokes to Invent the Expert	97
	John Henry, The Steel Driving Man (1929)	98
	The Eclipse Clothes Wringer (c. 1880s)	100
	Woman with Bicycle (c. 1890s)	101
	The Taint of the Bicycle (1902) W. F. Fonvielle	102
IV	The Progressive Era	107
6	Training for the Industrial Age	109
	Comments on the Advisibility of Instructing Engineering Students in the History of the Engineering Profession (1903) L. S. Randolph	111
	Industrial Education; Will It Solve the Negro Problem, II (1904) Booker T. Washington	113
	The Training of Negroes for Social Power (1904) W. E. B. DuBois	120
	Industrial Education--Will It Solve the Negro Problem (1904) Fannie Barrier	127
	Working with the Hands (1904) Booker T. Washington	132
	How Electricity is Taught at Tuskegee (1904) Charles W. Pierce	136
	Racial Progress as Reported in The Colored American Magazine (1902)	142
	The American Negro Artisan (1904) Thomas J. Calloway	144
	Results of Some Hard Experiences: A Plain Talk to Young Men (1902) William H. Dorkins	153
	Manufacturing Household Articles (1904) Samuel R. Scottron	157
	The Career of Mechanic John G. Howard (1902)	161
7	Inventors	163
	The Colored Inventor: A Record of Fifty Years (1913) Henry E. Baker	165
	Clara Frye, A Woman Inventor (1907)	172
	U.S. Patent to Garret A. Morgan for a "Breathing Device" (1914)	174
V	Between the World Wars	179
8	The Rural South	181
	You May Plow Here: The Narrative of Sara Brooks Sara Brooks	183
	Cotton Picking Machines and Southern Agriculture	189
	We (1927) Charles Lindbergh	191
9	Industrial Employment	193
	Tuskegee Ideals in Industrial Education (1926) Joseph L. Whiting	195
	Women at Work: A Century of Industrial Change (1934)	199
	The Typewriter (1926) Dorothy West	202
10	The Automobile	209
	Automobiles and Jim Crow Regulations (1924)	211
	Through the Windshield (1933) Alfred Edgar Smith	212
	Running the Red Light (Tilman C. Cothran)	216
	U.S. Patent to G. A. Morgan for a "Traffic Signal" (1923)	217
VI	World War II and the Cold War	221
11	Learning to Fly	223
	Soaring above Setbacks: The Autobiography of Janet Harmon Bragg, African American Aviator Janet Harmon Bragg	225
	Coffey School of Aeronautics (1944) and 99th Pursuit Squadron, Air Unit (1942)	226
	Lt. Clarence "Lucky" Lester	229
12	War Work	231
	Negro Workers and the National Defense Program (1942)	233
	A Black Woman at Work in a Wartime Airplane Assembly Plant	245
	Graduate Technicians and National Technical Association (1944)	246
	Defense and Wartime Employment (1946-1947)	248
	Bay Area Council against Discrimination, San Francisco (1942)	252
13	After the War	255
	Elm City, A Negro Community in Action (1945) C. L. Spellman	257
	Mechanization in Agriculture (1941-1946)	260
	The Negro in the Aerospace Industry (1968) Herbert R. Northrup	265
VII	The Movement and Beyond	277
14	Setting a Political Agenda	279
	Revolution in a Technological Society (1971) Samuel D. Proctor	281
15	Ties to Africa	289
	Mickey Leland and the USAID Bureau for Africa	291
	Solar Cooking Demonstration in Akwasiho Village, Ghana Hattie Carwell	295
16	Engineering Careers	301
	Women and Minorities in Science and Engineering	303
	History of the National Society of Black Engineers (1997) Jerry Good	309
	Black Women Engineers and Technologists Valerie L. Thomas	313
	Careers in Science and Technology (1993)	330
17	Accessing the Information Age	339
	Bridging the Racial Divide on the Internet (1998) Donna L. Hoffman and Thomas P. Novak	341
	Cyberghetto: Blacks Are Falling through the Net (1998) Frederick L. McKissack, Jr.	348
	Troubletown (1998)	352
	The Black Technological Entrepreneur (1999) Janet Stites	353
18	Technological Troubles	357
	A Place at the Table: A Sierra Roundtable on Race, Justice, and the Environment, and The Letter That Shook a Movement (1993)	359
	Neighbors Rally to Fight Proposed Waste-Burner (1992)	371
	United States to Weigh Blacks' Complaints about Pollution (1993)	374
	Presidential Executive Order 12898--Environmental Justice	377
	Study Attacks "Environmental Justice" (1994)	380
	New York Seminarian Promotes Environmental Justice in Africa (1996) Paulette V. Walker	382
	Further Readings	385
	Index	387