8 Incredible Black Engineers Who Made Their Mark On History

Here are eight incredible Black engineers who achieved greatness and made their mark on history. 

 1. Mary Jackson, NASA’s first Black female engineer, who along with pioneering mathematicians Katherine Johnson and Dorothy Vaughan helped NASA send the first American to space. 

2. William Fauntroy, an original Tuskegee Airman and D.C. Metro’s first Black engineer.

Photo via: TSA

3. Lewis Latimer, an inventor and engineer who created an improvement to Thomas Edison’s light bulb, which burned out too quickly. 

4.  Guion Bluford Jr., an aerospace engineer who became the first Black man to travel to space in 1983.

5. Mae Jemison, an aerospace engineer and physicist who became the first Black woman to travel to space in 1992. 

6. Ursula Burns, a mechanical engineer who went on to become the first Black woman CEO to lead a Fortune 500 company.

7. Jerry Lawson, a self-taught engineer who became the first major Black video game engineer and designer. Lawson created the first cartridge-based video game console. 

Photo via: Museum Of Play/The Estate Of Jerry Lawson 

8. April Ericsson, the first woman to receive a PhD in mechanical engineering from Howard University, and the first African American woman to receive a PhD in engineering from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.