IDKMYDE: Invention That Revitalized Slavery

On this episode of #IDKMYDE, we're diving into some fascinating trivia. Did you know that the invention responsible for revitalizing chattel slavery in the United States was none other than the cotton gin? And who's behind this game-changing creation? Join us as we uncover more hidden gems in history and challenge our assumptions.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
On today's episode. If I didn't know, maybe you didn't either.
It's question what invention single handedly revitalized chattel slavery in
the United States and who's responsible for its creation? You

(00:20):
got thirty seconds. I didn't know, Maybe you know. I
didn't know. Maybe I didn't know. I didn't know. Maybe
you didn't know. I didn't know. I didn't know. If
you said the cotton gen created by Eli Whitney, you're correct. See,
the truth of the matter is, in the late seventeen hundred,

(00:40):
slavery was phasing out. Folks wasn't making no money off
ind to go. See, cotton was easy to grow in
the South, but it was tough to process because you
had to separate them sticky seeds from the fibers. Well,
the cotton gen made that process oh so much easier.
Man After the invention of the cotton gen, the need
for raw cotton doubled each decade after eighteen I mean

(01:00):
a few of the other inventions, machines to spin and
weave the cotton, the steam boat to transport the cot.
By eighteen fifty, America was growing three quarters of the
world's supply of cotton, and who were picking it all
black folk. In seventeen ninety, cotton growing became so profitable
that it increased the demand for land and enslaved labor.

(01:21):
In seventeen ninety it was six slave states. By eighteen
sixty it was fifteen slave states. Now two strange things
about Eli Whitney. One, why did I always think Eli
Whitney was black? He's not. Eli Whitney is a white
man from Massachusetts. Another interesting fact about Eli Whitney is,
despite having a patent the cotton gin didn't make him

(01:43):
no bread. I know they had to make him hot. See,
folks in the South, we just made and used counterfeit versions.
And Eli Whitney spent most of his time in Southern
courts fighting, and most times those courts sided with the
local Southerners rather than some Yankee. Still have no clue.
While always all the black men invented the cotton gen,
now there are stories to say an enslaved person invented

(02:05):
the cotton gen and Eli Whitney got the patent for it,
but there's no proof of that. It is, however, no
secret that black folks rarely had the capital or connections
to get their things patented. So many times their masters
will take the inventions and be rewarded with the patents.
Then there were your black folks that got patents by
making white inventions better or more practical. For example, South

(02:27):
Carolina native Henry Ogden Holmes, he was black. He invented
the sawtooth gen around seventeen ninety two when he and
Eli Whitney were in Savannah, Georgia. The light bulb, we
all know that was invented by Thomas Edison. But the
innovation to use longer lasting light bulbs with a carbon
filament that came from a black man, Lewis Latimer. Look,

(02:49):
if you're interested in more, you can check out the
book Black Inventors of America by McKinley Burt Junior. Now
you won't see Eli Whitney in that book because he's white.
Don't go and come from the book. And I didn't know.
Maybe you didn't either. I didn't know. H