Black History Knowledge — October 14

What happened on this day. These are the October 14 moments in Black history worth knowing, remembering, and passing on.

1834 — Henry Blair received a patent for his seed planter

Letters Patent No. X8447 were issued to Henry Blair on October 14, 1834, for a corn planter, a machine that opened the soil, deposited seed, and covered it in one operation. Blair’s patent is part of the small surviving federal record of Black invention before the Civil War, when patent files generally did not record an inventor’s race and slavery limited who could claim property rights in inventions.

1834 — Four people were charged for teaching free Black people to read in Wheeling

On October 14, 1834, authorities in Wheeling, then part of Virginia, charged Ellen Richie, John Templeton, John Moore and Stanley Cuthbert with unlawful assembly for holding a literacy class for free Black residents. Virginia’s 1831 anti-literacy law banned meetings of free Black people for teaching them reading or writing. Black attendees faced up to 20 lashes, and white instructors faced fines of up to $50 and up to two months in jail. The case shows how Southern anti-literacy laws criminalized Black education; the Equal Justice Initiative says the law produced at least a dozen prosecutions in Wheeling alone.

1964 — Martin Luther King Jr. was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize

The Norwegian Nobel Committee announced Martin Luther King Jr. as the 1964 Peace Prize laureate on October 14. At age thirty-five, he was then the youngest recipient. The award internationally recognized the Black freedom movement’s use of nonviolent direct action against segregation and disfranchisement.

Wear the history: Martin Luther King Jr. — from the Black Knowledge Wear collection.