Black History Celebrates: John Parker & Henry Boyd

Sometimes slaves waited until they were free to develop the ideas they had formulated while in slavery. The work of runaway slaves served the abolitionists well because it was tangible evidence of what FREE PEOPLE might be able to accomplish.

John Parker [1827-1900] was hired out by his master to work in an iron foundry in Mobile, Alabama. Hired out slaves were assigned by their masters to work for another person, but the master received the wages. In addition to the normal workload, Parked worked overtime and holidays for two years and earned $1800 enough money to buy his freedom. As a free man, he moved to Ripley, Ohio, 1850, where he became involved in the UNDERGROUND RAILROAD, a system that helped runaway slaves get to freedom. Empowered by his freedom, Parker used his skills he had learned as a slave and invented a TOBACCO SCREW PRESS in 1854. The function of the screw press was to compress the tobacco leaves into a more manageable bundle for shipment. He manufactured it at the Parker Machine and Foundry Company, which stayed in business until the end of World War 1.

Although Northerners were generally against slavery, there were more than a few who advocated segregation. There was a lot of resentment, particularly toward skilled blacks who challenged whites for jobs in business and industry. To keep white workers from rioting and striking, many Northerners businesses adopted the policy of hiring white first and then if there were still jobs available, offering them to blacks. In the case of layoffs, blacks regardless of seniority were let go first. Thus the saying: blacks were the last hired but first fired.

Naturally, these unfair hiring practices resulted in the underemployment of skilled black laborers. To compensate for this, some blacks started businesses of their own and hired other blacks and sometimes whites, to work for them. Less enterprising white were frightened and angered by these independent FREE BLACKS as the story of Henry Boyd [1802-1886] shows.

Like Parker, Henry Boyd earned his freedom by working double duty as a cabinetmaker apprentice and in the saltworks near his home in Kentucky. In 1826, he went to Ohio, where at first he was refused a job. He eventually found work as a carpenter and used his carpentry skills to DEVELOP A NEW WOODEN BED FRAME. The bed has been described as constructed so that its wooden rails could be screwed into the headboard and the endboard simultaneously, creating a stronger frame. He manufactured the Boyd Bed at his factory in Cincinnati, Ohio until 1863.

Researcher Portia James noted that Boyd didn’t patent his bedframe, choosing instead to seek “indirect protection” for it 1833 by having a white cabinet maker receive the patent for him.

Other furniture builders copied Boyd’s design but he stamped his name on each bed he made. Boyd employed up to fifty employees and ran a clean, safe shop.

Today Boyd’s beds have great value as antiques, and museums all over the world seek to include one in their collections.

It is a fact that free blacks who had more education, more time, more mobility, and more control over their lives were able to patent more inventions than slaves. But that is not to suggest that slaves were less creative or incapable of being inventors.

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Excerpts from "African American Inventors"

McKissack Patricia and Frederick "African American Inventors" Brookfield, Connecticut:The Milbrook Press 1994:24-27pp

Koco, thanks again. I love your style.
I read in one book called "1001
Things Everyone should know about
African American History" that slaves
did start fires because they were
rebelling against their Terrible
treatment.