I don’t use the term “black history” because I am not black: I am African.
When the slave ship came, it brought Africans, not Virgin Islanders, so I am African and proud.
To the other 95 percent of Africans who call themselves Caribbean people, that’s your business. I know who I am.
I am writing about inventions made by my people for which someone else stole the credit.
• John Standard: refrigerator
• Sarah Boone: ironing board
• George Te Samon: clothes dryer
• Jane Matzeliger, of Guyana: shoe lasting machine
• Walter Sammons: combs
• Joseph Smith: lawn sprinkler
• John Burr: lawn mower
• Frederick Jones: air conditioner
• Alice Parker: heating furnace
• Lewis Latimer: electric lamp
• Michael Harvey: lantern
• Granville T. Woods: automatic cut-off switch
• Thomas W. Stewart: mop
• Lloyd P. Ray: dustpan
• Alexander Miles: elevator
• Richard Spikes: automatic gearshift
• Joseph Gambol: super charge system for internal combustion engine
• Garrett A. Morgan: traffic signals
• Charles Brooks: street sweeper
• Joan Love: pencil sharpener
• William Purveys: fountain pen, hand stamp
• Lee Burridge: typewriter machine
• W.A. Love: advance printing press
• William Barry: post marking and cancelling machine
• Phillip Downing: letter drop
• Dr. Charles Drew: blood bank
As an African, I am very proud. Africa is my homeland; VI is just nationality.
People like Dr. Quincy Lettsome, Dr. Melvin Turnbull, Gilbert Trott, Alred Frett, Shavanda Edjuenka, the Rastafarians, the African Studies Club, the brothers and sisters who attend the wreath-tossing ceremony for remembrance of the middle passage of our ancestors — they know who they are.
I know my exact family roots in Africa. On my mother’s side, my DNA is the same with the Kru — or Kroo or Klu — people of Liberia; the Balanta people of Guinea-Bissau; and the Mende people of Sierra Leone. On my father’s side, it’s the Yoruba people of Nigeria.
Although I have 15 percent European in my DNA — the Quaker William Penn on my father’s side and the Skelton on my mother’s side — and 10 percent Carib on my father’s side, I am still African.
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