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Year:1857​

Who: Ned​

Where: Pike County, Mississippi​

What: Ned, an enslaved Black inventor in 1850s Mississippi, created a transformative agricultural tool: the cotton scraper. This device revolutionized cotton cultivation by enabling twice the work with half the horsepower, making it highly valuable to planters in the South. Despite the invention’s brilliance, Ned could not legally patent his creation due to his status as an enslaved person and, therefore, a non-citizen. His enslaver, Oscar Stuart, sought to capitalize on the invention by applying for the patent himself. Stuart argued that as Ned’s owner, he was entitled to the “fruits of the mind and labor” of his slave, a common justification in the South to claim ownership over enslaved people’s intellectual achievements.

The U.S. Patent Office, however, rejected Stuart’s application, stating that only the true inventor could apply for a patent. Since Ned was the actual inventor and ineligible under the law, Stuart’s claim was denied. This decision revealed the paradox of slavery: while the system exploited the intellectual capabilities of enslaved individuals, it simultaneously denied them the recognition afforded to inventors. Furious, Stuart argued that denying him the patent deprived him of his rightful profits and undermined the South’s legal traditions. Nevertheless, undeterred by the lack of patent protection, Stuart manufactured and sold the cotton scraper, advertising it as the invention of “a Negro slave.” He even used this fact as propaganda to discredit abolitionists, asserting that slavery did not stifle innovation but instead provided the conditions for Black ingenuity to flourish under the control of white masters.

While Stuart reaped the rewards of Ned’s ingenuity, publicly touting the invention to elevate himself and undermine abolitionist arguments, Ned’s name was largely forgotten, swallowed by a system that refused to recognize his brilliance. His invention, though transformative, became a tool for his oppressor’s gain, and his legacy was reduced to a footnote in the history of American innovation. Yet, Ned’s cotton scraper stands as a silent testament to the creativity and skill of an enslaved man whose contributions, though denied proper recognition, helped shape the agricultural practices of his time. His story reminds us that even in the harshest of circumstances, brilliance cannot be extinguished, even if the world refuses to see it.

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