Thomas L. Jennings

Thomas L. Jennings was born free in New York City in 1791 and started out as an apprentice to a prominent New York tailor. He became a successful tailor and clothier in the city, and one of its most enterprising Black businessmen.

Jennings experimented with cleaning agents and solutions, looking for a way to remove dirt and grease from clothes and woollen fabrics without damaging them. He discovered a process he called dry scouring, a forerunner of modern dry cleaning, which kept garments in their original shape and gave them the appearance of new.

On 3 March 1821, when he was about 29, he was granted a U.S. patent for the process, making him the first African American known to receive a patent. It came 44 years before the end of slavery, and the patent was proof that he was a citizen with property rights at a time when many Americans denied that Black people could be citizens at all. His patent letter was signed by Secretary of State John Quincy Adams, and he was said to have hung it in a gilded frame over his bed.

Jennings earned a substantial income from his tailoring business and his invention, and used his wealth in support of the Black community and the anti-slavery cause. He was an active abolitionist and a leading figure in New York's free Black community, and his daughter Elizabeth Jennings Graham became famous in 1854 for refusing to leave a whites-only streetcar in a case that helped to desegregate public transport in the city.

He died in New York City, with sources giving 1856 or 1859 as the year; Frederick Douglass noted his death and the importance of his patent, which had recognised him as a citizen of the United States, at a time when that designation shocked many.