Born September 24, 1853 (Sumpter County, South Carolina)

Died April 21, 1926 (Chicago, Illinois)

Inventor

Legislator

Farmer

George Washington Murray was an inventor, educator, and politician in late nineteenth-century America. Born into slavery, he rose to prominence as one of the first African Americans to serve in Congress. He farmed for several years in South Carolina and invented a number of farm tools in the 1890s.

Patents and Politics

Murray was born in September 1853, in Sumpter County, South Carolina. He spent his early years in slavery on a plantation in Rembert and was nine years old when the historic Emancipation Proclamation freed all slaves in the Southern states during the American Civil War (1861–65; a war between the Union [the North], who were opposed to slavery, and the Confederacy [the South], who were in favor of slavery). By then his parents had either been sold off to other owners...