# George Washington Murray

*George Washington Murray was a Black inventor, congressman, and archivist of Black invention whose 1894 reading of a patented-inventors list helped force the nation to see Black authorship in American technology.*

> Black's Encyclopedia — the sourced record of Black American life.
> Portal: Movement & Politics · Status: In review · Revised: July 14, 2026 · Revisions: 1
> Canonical: https://www.blacksencyclopedia.com/record/george-washington-murray

## Questions this record answers

- Who helped document Black inventors in the 1890s?
- Why does Black invention history survive in lists and newspapers?
- How did George Washington Murray challenge the erasure of Black inventors?

## Summary

George Washington Murray did more than serve in Congress: he publicly named Black inventors and their patents, helping assemble a record that the dominant archive had failed to preserve. On August 10, 1894, he read a list of 92 inventions patented by African Americans into the Congressional Record, making Black inventive authorship harder to erase.

## The archive's standing

Murray stands as a record-maker as much as a legislator. He treated Black invention as a public fact requiring defense, enumeration, and repetition. The archive holds him as one of the people who built the paper trail that later scholars used to restore Black authorship to American history.

## What he built

Murray understood that invention without record would be stolen by silence. His 1894 list named patented work by African Americans and gave later researchers a scaffold for recovery.

## Why his act mattered

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has recognized Murray’s reading as a milestone in the documentation of Black inventors. That act mattered because patent applications did not record race, and because Black invention often survived only through scattered lists, newspaper notices, and later archival reconstruction.

## The archive’s position

Murray’s accomplishment was not merely rhetorical. He helped shift Black invention from private achievement to public evidence, and that public naming was itself a form of historical repair.

## Sources

1. U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, "Found on Baker's list," historical story on George Washington Murray and his August 10, 1894 reading of 92 Black-patented inventions.
2. Library of Congress Guides, "African American Innovation, Invention, and Ownership: Individuals born pre-1865," identifying Henry E. Baker as a patent examiner and advocate for African American inventors.
3. University of Maine Library LibGuides, "Black Inventors and Their Patents: Murray's List," noting that patent applications did not ask for ethnic group identification.

## Related records

- https://www.blacksencyclopedia.com/record/henry-e-baker
- https://www.blacksencyclopedia.com/record/thomas-l-jennings
- https://www.blacksencyclopedia.com/record/united-states-patent-system-and-black-inventors

---

Cite as: Black's Encyclopedia, "George Washington Murray," revised July 14, 2026. https://www.blacksencyclopedia.com/record/george-washington-murray

Text under the Black's Record License: cite the record, keep attribution attached, cite the revision date.