Imagine this.

Manually opening an elevator door. Coca- Cola and Coco Chanel but without that hint of vanilla that you love. No such thing as CCTV. These are just a few of the inventions that we use and enjoy daily, thanks to the ingenuity of black inventors. You likely haven’t given a second thought to their genesis, but even if you had, sadly these stories have often been whitewashed, unrecorded or lost in the annuls of history, so you wouldn’t know them as they really are anyway. 

It’s time to change that and celebrate the incredible black men and women who have helped to shape the world as we know it, and in so doing inspire a generation of black youth to aspire to and achieve greatness. 

Read on to discover just some of the life affirming stories that you will find in We Were Always Here – Stories of Black Inventors Across the African Diaspora.