Black Technology is a sweeping, accessible history of Black invention, engineering, science, and ownership, traced from the first documented Black-held U.S. patent in 1821 to the age of artificial intelligence. Darryl Williams Jr. tells the story not as a list of trivia, but through one central question: what happens when genius is present, but credit, ownership, money, and memory are withheld?
Across five parts, the book follows inventors and scientists whose work is built into the world around us: Thomas Jennings turning a patent into freedom, Norbert Rillieux remaking sugar refining, Lewis Latimer helping make electric light practical, Elijah McCoy changing industrial lubrication, Garrett Morgan bringing safety to poisoned air and dangerous streets, Katherine Johnson and Dorothy Vaughan carrying mathematics into space, Charles Drew building blood-banking systems, Patricia Bath advancing cataract surgery, James West co-inventing the electret microphone, Mark Dean helping shape the personal computer, Marian Croak helping make internet voice practical, Gladys West's mathematics supporting GPS accuracy, and Joy Buolamwini exposing bias in machines that claimed to be neutral.
The book honors the restored-credit tradition readers know from Hidden Figures while widening the lens to two centuries of Black technology: patents, medicine, food systems, games, spaceflight, computing, AI, venture capital, and the fight to own an idea. It also corrects beloved myths when the record demands it, because the real history is strong enough without exaggeration.
Written for adult readers and strong teens, and supported by a timeline, cast, glossary, reading guide, source notes, and educator materials, Black Technology is a history lesson, a technology story, and a call to repair the gap between talent and opportunity.
