Heart health is what many Americans are concerned with today, and one of the ways Americans find relief is through the installation of a pacemaker, which helps regulate the heart’s beating functions. Many Americans have to give thanks to Otis Boykin who created the pacemaker, which has saved countless lives.
Born in Texas in 1920, Boykin graduated from Fisk College in 1941 and started his career at Magic Radio and TV Corporation and Nilsen Research Laboratories. Boykin invented products on his own while he tried to develop his own company, Boykin-Fruth Incorporated, with twenty-six patents associated with him, including the control unit for the pacemaker as well as the wire precision resistor used in TVs and radios. He also created a device that can withstand extreme temperature changes and pressure. Because it was cheaper and more reliable than others like it already out there, Boykin’s device became highly sought after by IBM for computers and the US military for guided missiles. It’s darkly ironic that he died in 1982 from heart failure of all things. Boykin’s inventions have helped doctors and surgeons give many Americans a new lease on life. So if your parents or grandparents are able to have renewed health because of a pacemaker, pour some out for Boykin, who made it all possible.
Frederick McKinley Jones’s inventions have impacted many areas of American life, from refrigeration to movie theaters. Born in 1893 in Ohio, he served in World War I in France before coming home and starting a job as a garage mechanic. Jones began inventing based on his own self-taught knowledge, with his first invention being a self-starting gasoline motor. As he transitioned from mechanic work toward working at a steamship and a hotel, he did more inventing and design work, including designing and building racecars after moving to Hallock, Minnesota. Incredibly, one of his cars, Number 15, was able to drive faster than an airplane.
Jones’s jack of all trades mentality kept him inventing new products, including adapters for silent movie projectors, allowing movie theaters to play talking films. He also invented a machine for the box office that issued tickets and provided change to customers. For those of you who have grown up in snowy areas, you might be accustomed to seeing a snowmobile or two—Jones invented that too.
The area he has the most patents in, however, is in refrigeration with forty total. One of those inventions includes the first automatic refrigeration system for long-haul trucks and railroad cars, which eliminated food spoilage during shipping and allowed Americans all across the country to eat fresh produce no matter where they lived. His work in refrigeration led him to create the Thermo-King Corporation in 1935, where he continued to change the world of long-distance food shipping. Jones died in 1961.
Atlanta owes a debt of thanks to Herman J. Russell, who started his real estate empire in 1946 by buying a lot where he would build a duplex. This property started Russell’s business of creating business in segregated Atlanta by developing many real estate investments and creating a construction company that would become one of the largest Black-owned companies in the nation and the largest Minority Business Enterprise (MBE) real estate firm in the country.
Russell’s slate of businesses includes H.J. Russell and Company, the umbrella company which housed other companies including H.J. Russell Construction Company, Paradise Management Inc., DDR International, H. J. Russell Plastering Company and Southeast Land Development Company. Russell’s projects turned Atlanta into what it is today, with buildings such as the Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, Philips Arena (now known as State Farm Arena), Turner Field and the Georgia Dome—all included in his portfolio. By 1994, H. J. Russel and Company grossed around $150 million with offices throughout the country, including in Miami and New York City.
Russell also used his money to help further Black prosperity by becoming the first Black member and eventually the second Black president of the Atlanta Chamber of Commerce. He contributed to the success of Maynard Jackson’s mayoral election campaign, leading to Jackson becoming Atlanta’s first Black mayor, and he also helped behind the scenes with the civil rights movement with friends like Martin Luther King Jr.
Reginald Lewis is described as the “richest Black man in America,” and was estimated to be worth at least one billion dollars by 1992. Lewis’s status made his business, TLC Beatrice International, the first Black-owned business to gross one billion d0llars in annual sales. Born in 1942 in Baltimore, Lewis attended Harvard Law School as the only person in the history of the school to be admitted before actually applying. In 1970, he and his associates established the first Black-owned law firm in Wall Street and used his legal expertise to develop investments in minority-owned businesses, which led him to become special counsel for big brands such as Equitable Life (now known as AXA) and General Foods. He also worked as counsel for the Commission for Racial Justice and successfully lobbied for North Carolina to pay interest on the bond for the Wilmington Ten, nine men and one woman who were wrongly convicted of arson and conspiracy in 1971 and served almost ten years in jail before an appeal granted them release.
The road to one billion d0llars started with Lewis’s TLC Group, L.P., established in 1983. The first acquisition he made under his new company was the McCall Pattern Company, which he bought for $22.5 million. Under his leadership, McCall’s had two of its most profitable years in its 113-year history, and in 1987, he sold McCalls for $65 million. He was also able to buy Beatrice Foods for $985 million, making his company the only US company to engage in the largest leverage buyout of overseas assets at the time. The newly restructured company, TLC Beatrice International, became the one billion dollar juggernaut that made Lewis a history-making Black businessman. Unfortunately, Lewis died unexpectedly in 1993 at the age of fifty due to a short illness. His legacy has certainly paved the way for others like rapper-turned Tidal mogul Jay-Z, who famously rapped, “I’m not a businessman, I’m a business, man.”
Blackness in Business
What can we learn from these men and women? I think the best thing we can take away is how much Black history surrounds us, even when we aren’t thinking about it. When you look at a traffic light or a simple zigzag stitch on a piece of clothing, you’re looking at a Black American invention. When you buy hair products or set your alarm system, you’re looking at the impact of Black Americans on our everyday lives. There is no part of America that Black Americans haven’t impacted, and it shows how we are a much more integral part of society than the history books would lead you to think.
Little-Known Civil Rights Leaders
So far in this book, we have been traveling through earlier periods of American history. Even though the “civil rights movement” as we understand it isn’t linked to times like the 1700s, 1800s, and even the early 1900s, the movement’s core beliefs were alive in abolitionist and likeminded groups. However, the civil rights movement as we know it began in the 1940s and grew to its zenith in the 1960s.
Conventional wisdom would tell us that the movement ended in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s with the murders of several civil rights leaders such as Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, Medgar Evers, and several others, including regular, everyday citizens like Emmett Till who were killed for simply being Black. But that’s where conventional wisdom is wrong. The civil rights movement continues today with social media-turned-real world groups such as Black Lives Matter, Dream Defenders, and others.
But before we get into the present and future, we must understand the foremothers and forefathers who laid the groundwork. We must give thanks to those who put their lives on the line to create better opportunities for us today.
Unsung Heroes
We know the usual names: Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks, Malcolm X, Congressman John Lewis. You have to wonder what the rest of the movement was like beyond these usual suspects. What are the stories we either haven’t heard or know very little about?