Bessie Blount Griffin and the Context of Contemporaries

Mary Kenner was not the only Black woman inventor of her era, though she is perhaps the most significant in terms of the number and impact of her patents.

Understanding her story is enriched by awareness of other Black women inventors who were working in the same period and facing the same general barriers.

Bessie Blount Griffin, born in 1914, two years after Kenner, developed a remarkable device: a machine that allowed amputees to feed themselves without assistance, by holding food at the level of the user’s mouth and delivering portions through the user’s use of a bite sensor.

Griffin was a physical therapist who had worked with veterans injured in World War II, and her invention emerged from direct professional experience with the practical challenges of disability.