Patents earned by blacks in the early 20th century appear to be much more poorly documented than black patents earned in the late 19th Century because a big effort had been made by good researchers in early 1900 to figure out which existing patent-holders were black in time for the World's Fair in Paris.
The US Patent Office sent out a mass mailing on January 26, 1900 asking patent attorneys and other experts for the names of black inventors to honor at the 1900 World's Fair. A detailed list of over 400 patents earned by blacks was published by black patent examiner Henry E. Baker in 1902.
Baker oversaw another mailing in 1913 as part of Pennsylvania's commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation. He published some of the highlights in verbal form in a 1913 pamphlet and a 1917 article in the Journal of Negro History in which he said he was up to 800 patents, but I haven't been able to find a published table of his new 1913 findings.
Cook says 65% of her 726 patents earned by blacks are from Baker's work, or about 472. I'm guessing most of her listings from Baker came from his 1900 survey, which featured over 400 patents, rather than from his apparently unpublished 1913 survey. If Baker had found another 375 or so patents by blacks in 1913 to get from ~425 in 1900 to 800 in 1913 (and assuming those were mostly post-1900 patents, that would suggest that, contra Cook, blacks were earning patents at about the same rate in the first dozen years of the 20th Century as in the first last dozen years of the 19th Century.
I could well believe that the racial environment got worse for blacks in the 1890s and then again in 1913 with the Wilson Democratic Administration coming to Washington. On the other hand, blacks were making "Up from Slavery" progress in terms of more literacy and a slow trickle to the freer and more industrial North. So my default assumption would be that the rate of black innovation was about the same, which is what Baker's reports of 425 in 1900 and 800 in 1913 suggest.
Patents earned by blacks in the early 20th century appear to be much more poorly documented than black patents earned in the late 19th Century because a big effort had been made by good researchers in early 1900 to figure out which existing patent-holders were black in time for the World's Fair in Paris.
The US Patent Office sent out a mass mailing on January 26, 1900 asking patent attorneys and other experts for the names of black inventors to honor at the 1900 World's Fair. A detailed list of over 400 patents earned by blacks was published by black patent examiner Henry E. Baker in 1902.
Baker oversaw another mailing in 1913 as part of Pennsylvania's commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation. He published some of the highlights in verbal form in a 1913 pamphlet and a 1917 article in the Journal of Negro History in which he said he was up to 800 patents, but I haven't been able to find a published table of his new 1913 findings.
Cook says 65% of her 726 patents earned by blacks are from Baker's work, or about 472. I'm guessing most of her listings from Baker came from his 1900 survey, which featured over 400 patents, rather than from his apparently unpublished 1913 survey. If Baker had found another 375 or so patents by blacks in 1913 to get from ~425 in 1900 to 800 in 1913 (and assuming those were mostly post-1900 patents, that would suggest that, contra Cook, blacks were earning patents at about the same rate in the first dozen years of the 20th Century as in the first last dozen years of the 19th Century.
I could well believe that the racial environment got worse for blacks in the 1890s and then again in 1913 with the Wilson Democratic Administration coming to Washington. On the other hand, blacks were making "Up from Slavery" progress in terms of more literacy and a slow trickle to the freer and more industrial North. So my default assumption would be that the rate of black innovation was about the same, which is what Baker's reports of 425 in 1900 and 800 in 1913 suggest.
https://www.unz.com/isteve/did-bidens-fed-nominee-lisa-cook-mess-up-her-most-famous-paper/