This is Ashley Newby and you’re listening to The Black Studies podcast, a Mellon grant sponsored series of conversations examining the history of the field. Our conversations engage with a wide range of activists and scholars - senior figures in the field, late doctoral students, and everyone in between, culture workers, and political organizers - in order to explore the cultural and political meaning of Black Studies as an area of inquiry and its critical methods.

Today's conversation is with Keith Holmes, a researcher, historian and author, and founder of Global Black Inventor Research Projects. Mr. Holmes has spent over thirty years researching innovations, inventions and patents by Black innovators & inventors. Researching inventors through the NY Patent Library, the Schomburg Library, Howard University’s Moorland-Spingarn Research Center among other places, Keith Holmes has picked up the baton from Henry E, Baker and has compiled a growing list of over 20,000 (1769-2025) innovations, inventions and trademarks by Black men and women from over eighty countries and five continents. He has lectured in Antigua, Barbados, California, Canada, Connecticut, Florida, Illinois, New York, New Jersey, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Washington, DC. Mr. Holmes has done virtual lectures in Los Angeles, Maryland, Tallahassee, Toronto and London. He is currently working on several projects about Black inventors and his book Black Inventors, Crafting Over 200 Years of Success is now in paperback and ebook formats.