Blacks In America

The federal government’s own crime statistics reveal that 90 percent of all violent interracial crimes are committed by blacks on Whites, not the reverse. Given that blacks only constitute about 13 percent of the population, a black person is 50 times more likely than a White person to commit a violent interracial crime.

Each item below is listed with its supposed black originator beneath it along with the year it was supposedly invented, followed by something about the real origin of the invention or at least an earlier instance of it.

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Traffic Signal
Invented by Garrett A. Morgan in 1923? No 
The first known traffic signal appeared in London in 1868 near the Houses of Parliament. Designed by JP Knight, it featured two semaphore arms and two gas lamps. The earliest electric traffic lights include Lester Wire's two-color version set up in Salt Lake City circa 1912, James Hoge's system (US patent #1,251,666) installed in Cleveland by the American Traffic Signal Company in 1914, and William Potts' 4-way red-yellow-green lights introduced in Detroit beginning in 1920. New York City traffic towers began flashing three-color signals also in 1920.

Garrett Morgan's cross-shaped, crank-operated semaphore was not among the first half-hundred patented traffic signals; nor was it  automatic  as is sometimes claimed; nor did it play any part in the evolution of the modern traffic light. See Inventing History: Garrett Morgan and the Traffic Signal.

Gas Mask
Garrett Morgan in 1914? No 
The invention of the gas mask predates Morgan's breathing device by several decades. Early versions were constructed by the Scottish chemist John Stenhouse in 1854 and the physicist John Tyndall in the 1870s, among many other inventors prior to World War I. See The Invention of the Gas Mask.

Peanut Butter
George Washington Carver (who began his peanut research in 1903)? No 
Peanuts, which are native to the New World tropics, were mashed into paste by Aztecs hundreds of years ago. Evidence of modern peanut butter comes from US patent #306727 issued to Marcellus Gilmore Edson of Montreal, Quebec in 1884, for a process of milling roasted peanuts between heated surfaces until the peanuts reached  a fluid or semi-fluid state.  As the product cooled, it set into what Edson described as  a consistency like that of butter, lard, or ointment.  In 1890, George A. Bayle Jr., owner of a food business in St. Louis, manufactured peanut butter and sold it out of barrels. J.H. Kellogg, of cereal fame, secured US patent #580787 in 1897 for his  Process of Preparing Nutmeal,  which produced a  pasty adhesive substance  that Kellogg called  nut-butter. 

George Washington Carver
 Discovered  hundreds of new and important uses for the peanut? Fathered the peanut industry? Revolutionized southern US agriculture? No 
Research by Barry Mackintosh, who served as bureau historian for the National Park Service (which manages the G.W. Carver National Monument), demonstrated the following:

Most of Carver's peanut and sweet potato creations were either unoriginal, impractical, or of uncertain effectiveness. No product born in his laboratory was widely adopted.
The boom years for Southern peanut production came prior to, and not as a result of, Carver's promotion of the crop.
Carver's work to improve regional farming practices was not of pioneering scientific importance and had little demonstrable impact.
To see how Carver gained  a popular reputation far transcending the significance of his accomplishments,  read Mackintosh's excellent article George Washington Carver: The Making of a Myth.

Automatic Lubricator,  Real McCoy 
Elijah McCoy revolutionized industry in 1872 by inventing the first device to automatically oil machinery? No  The phrase  Real McCoy  arose to distinguish Elijah's inventions from cheap imitations? No 
The oil cup, which automatically delivers a steady trickle of lubricant to machine parts while the machine is running, predates McCoy's career; a description of one appears in the May 6, 1848 issue of Scientific American. The automatic  displacement lubricator  for steam engines was developed in 1860 by John Ramsbottom of England, and notably improved in 1862 by James Roscoe of the same country. The  hydrostatic  lubricator originated no later than 1871.

Variants of the phrase Real McCoy appear in Scottish literature dating back to at least 1856 — well before Elijah McCoy started designing lubricators.

Evidence & sources: The not-so-real McCoy
Also see The Fake McCoy and Did Somebody Say McTrash?

Blood Bank
Dr. Charles Drew in 1940? No 
During World War I, Dr. Oswald H. Robertson of the US army preserved blood in a citrate-glucose solution and stored it in cooled containers for later transfusion. This was the first use of  banked  blood. By the mid-1930s the Russians had set up a national network of facilities for the collection, typing, and storage of blood. Bernard Fantus, influenced by the Russian program, established the first hospital blood bank in the United States at Chicago's Cook County Hospital in 1937. It was Fantus who coined the term  blood bank.  See highlights of transfusion history from the American Association of Blood Banks.

Blood Plasma
Did Charles Drew  discover  (in about 1940) that plasma could be separated and stored apart from the rest of the blood, thereby revolutionizing transfusion medicine? No 
The possibility of using blood plasma for transfusion purposes was known at least since 1918, when English physician Gordon R. Ward suggested it in a medical journal. In the mid-1930s, John Elliott advanced the idea, emphasizing plasma's advantages in shelf life and donor-recipient compatibility, and in 1939 he and two colleagues reported having used stored plasma in 191 transfusions. (See historical notes on plasma use.) Charles Drew was not responsible for any breakthrough scientific or medical discovery; his main career achievement lay in supervising or co-supervising major programs for the collection and shipment of blood and plasma.