Danny Davis: “I certainly agree that we must have the resources. There is simply no doubt about it. We have to find new avenues, new…”

“I certainly agree that we must have the resources. There is simply no doubt about it. We have to find new avenues, new systems, and new approaches. But I am just amazed when I look back into history and see what individuals were able to do. I was looking at African Americans who had been inventors. Some of this is back during the time of slavery when slaves, of course, could not have patents; and so African Americans may have significantly been involved in some inventions that they never got the credit for. For example, it is suggested that when Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone, he had Lewis Latimer, a black man, to draft the plans, and that Mr. Latimer had been a member of the Edison Pioneers; and this was a group of individuals who had actually worked for Edison. Then we go back to even people who lived in the 1700s, Benjamin Banneker, who is sometimes called the first black scientist in this country of any real note. And of course, Banneker helped to lay out the plans for the city of Washington, D.C. He was an engineer. He received a presidential appointment. It is just amazing that he could have done that. Then there was Joe Anderson, a slave who was believed to have played a major role in the creation of the grain harvester that Cyrus McCormick got all of the credit for, the McCormick reaper. But Joe Anderson helped him do it. Ben Montgomery, another slave, who actually belonged to Jefferson Davis, and he was supposed to have improved a boat propeller.”