In honor of Black History Month, here are few profiles of contributors to history of African descent:

First Field Officer in the U.S. Army

Maj. Martin Robison Delany: He was the first African-American field officer in the U.S. Army. He led the 52nd U.S. Colored Troops Regiment and became the first line officer in U.S. Army history. He was accepted at Harvard Medical School but was kicked out after three weeks when white students petitioned for his removal.

Marie Van Brittan Brown

Home Security Inventions

While home security systems today are more advanced than ever, back in 1966 the idea for a home surveillance device seemed almost unthinkable. That was the year famous African-American inventor Marie Van Brittan Brown, and her partner Albert Brown, applied for an invention patent for a closed-circuit television security system – the forerunner to the modern home security system.

Brown’s system had a set of four peep holes and a camera that could slide up and down to look out each one. Anything the camera picked up would appear on a monitor. An additional feature of Brown’s invention was that a person also could unlock a door with a remote control.
A female black inventor far ahead of her time, Marie Van Brittan Brown created an invention that was the first in a long string of home-security inventions that continue to flood the market today.

Thanks to Tanisha Jones and her daughter Sinai for compiling these profiles from the following sources:

1) The Encyclopedia of African-American Heritage, by Susan Altman
2) The Roots website, theroots.com
3) Famous Black Inventors website, black-inventor.com