Customer Reviews

African American Firsts: Famous Little-Known and Unsung Triumphs of Blacks in America

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The book I ordered did not even mention Barack Obama!!! Very disappointed! Very Disappointed! Wish I could send it back, I actually ordered it for a Christmas Gift... but it is not what I had thought I was ordering ;-(

Readers of this book will learn that African Americans invented the following devices: the first rail telegraph, first clock made in colonial American, first long lasting carbon filament for light bulbs, the third rail used in subway trains, the electric trolley, performed the first open heart surgery or first pericardial heart surgery, first traffic signal, first gas mask, first electric turn signals in cars, and first golf tee. The only problem is that all these claims made in this book are completely false. These claims are widespread on the internet and have been repeatedly disproven. For example the claim that Garrett Morgan invented the traffic light has been widespread, but the patent office issued dozens of traffic signal patents before Morgan. The modern red, yellow, green traffic lights we have today were already on the streets two years before Morgan applied for his patent. Moreover his signal looks nothing like the modern traffic signals. Instead it resembles traffic signals that were used in London before Morgan was even born.
One afternoon of Googling "black invention myths" revealed over a dozen factual errors just in the science and medicine section.
This book even claims that Senator Carol Moseley-Braun was "the first African American to serve in that body in its history" even though the same book had previously listed two African Americans in the Senate during Reconstruction.

THIS A GREAT BOOK AND i WAS SO HAPPY WITH IT BECAUSE I LEARN MORE EACH DAY THAT I READ SO THANK YOU FOR MY HISTORY LESSON.....