Getty/Wikimedia CommonsWithout these Black inventors, modern-day life in America mightve looked very different.American history is peppered with some of the greatest inventive minds in the world. But the long history of racism in the United States has led to many Black inventors being discriminated against or marginalized just because of the color of their skin.For example, Alice Ball was an African American chemist who discovered the first effective treatment for leprosy. But the credit for her brilliance was nearly stolen by a white male academic. There is also the Black innovator George Washington Carver, whose legacy in revolutionizing the food industry was complicated by the racism he endured.But despite the many challenges they faced, these African American inventors broke through barriers and paved the way for later generations of Black thinkers to succeed in America.Lonnie Johnson: The NASA Engineer Who Invented The Super SoakerThomas S. England/The LIFE Images Collection via Getty Images/Getty ImagesLonnie Johnson is a Black inventor who created the popular Super Soaker water gun.As a Black child born and raised in segregated Alabama during the 1940s, Lonnie Johnson faced an uphill battle to achieve success. Still, he seemed destined for greatness from an early age.He had an affinity for at-home science projects, tearing up his younger sisters doll to examine how its eyes shut, and nearly burning down his house while trying to make DIY rocket fuel. His childhood friends lovingly nicknamed him The Professor.In 1968, young Lonnie Johnson earned first place in the Junior Engineering Technical Society science fair at the University of Alabama despite being the only Black student in the competition. His winning science creation was a three-foot-tall compressed-air-powered robot named Linex.In spite of the things that have been perpetrated on my race holding us in bondage under slavery, then making it illegal to educate us and then subjecting us to long-term discrimination and criticism we succeed anyway, to a very large extent. We just need to realize what were capable of.Lonnie JohnsonJohnsons smarts earned him mathematics and U.S. Air Force scholarships, which helped pay for his tuition at Tuskegee University. He later joined the U.S. Air Force, where he helped develop the stealth bomber program at the the Strategic Air Command.Lonnie Johnsons perseverance landed him a job as an engineer at NASA. But his busy schedule didnt stop him from tinkering with his own inventions in his spare time. Super Soaker inventor Lonnie Johnson holds more than 120 patents to his name.During one of his at-home experiments in 1982, the innovative engineer machined a nozzle and hooked it up to the faucet in his bathroom sink. The customized nozzle helped propel a strong stream of water across the sink, sparking an idea in Johnsons head that a hyper-powerful water gun would be fun. The first consumer tester of his Super Soaker prototype was none other than his seven-year-old daughter, Aneka. And after his super-strong water gun became a hit at a family picnic with the Air Force, Johnson knew he had created something big. By the time the Super Soaker was officially released on the market in 1990 as the Power Drencher, the toys potential was clear. Johnson said they didnt even do any special marketing or TV advertising for the toy, and it still sold well.The following year, it was rebranded as the Super Soaker and it made over $200 million in sales by 1992. Since then, it has gone on to annually rank in the Top 20 of the best-selling toys in the world.Lonnie Johnsons lucrative toy invention has since helped fund his scientific experiments. With a net worth of over $360 million, the inventor has opened his own research facility in Atlanta, Georgia, where he employs a team of 30 people working on various projects.He also takes Super Soakers to schools to give talks to children, perhaps inspiring some future Black inventors along the way.Kids need exposure to ideas, and they need to be given an opportunity to experience success, Johnson said. Once you get that feeling, it grows and feeds itself but some kids have got to overcome their environments and attitudes that have been imposed on them.Lonnie Johnsons skyrocketing career as an innovator certainly proves that.Alice Ball: The Chemist Who Revolutionized Treatment For Leprosy PatientsWikimedia CommonsBy her early 20s, Alice Ball had revolutionized medical treatment for leprosy.Alice Ball was born on July 24, 1892, in Seattle to an accomplished family. Her father, James, was a lawyer and her mother, Laura, was a photographer. Her grandfather was a pioneer of photography the first to use the daguerreotype method to shoot photographs.It was during her time pursuing her masters degree in chemistry at the College of Hawaii (now the University of Hawaii) that Alice Ball began her own pioneering research in chemistry.She specialized in plant biochemistry and identified active components in the kava root, a plant native to the Pacific Islands, and published two articles in the worlds most prestigious chemistry journal.After completing her studies in 1915, Alice Ball became the first Black woman to earn a masters degree in chemistry from the College of Hawaii. She was offered a teaching position at the school, making her the first woman to teach chemistry there and she was only 23 years old.Balls biggest achievement was her breakthrough research on oil from the chaulmoogra tree, which was being used as a topical (albeit ineffective) treatment for leprosy. Her work caught the attention of Harry T. Hollmann, the director of the Kalihi leprosy clinic, who contacted Ball to find a better treatment for the disease.Hawaii State ArchivesThe Kalaupapa leper colony in Hawaii had 8,000 leprosy patients who were excluded from society.People were struggling with what do you do with this oil, which, if you let it sit, it just hardens into, like, lard, explained Paul Wermager, head of the science library at the University of Hawaii. But using alcohol, you make it into whats called an ethyl ester. Then it becomes water-soluble, and that was the breakthrough that she made.Ball came up with an injectable treatment for leprosy patients within a year of her research, which became known as the Ball Method. The treatment was the first effective medication for the disease and drastically improved the lives of thousands of patients who had been stigmatized by society.Sadly, Ball would never be able to properly celebrate her accomplishment since a teaching accident led to her untimely death in 1916. According to the Honolulu Pacific Commercial Advertiser, While instructing her class in September 1916, Miss Ball suffered from chlorine poisoning.Severely ill, she returned to Seattle where she died shortly thereafter at the age of 24. But even after she died, Ball still faced barriers. Arthur Dean, the president of the College of Hawaii, initially tried to take credit for Balls research on chaulmoogra oil and even renamed it the Dean Method. He got away with this for years.But in 1922, Hollmann, who had first turned to Ball for help, published a paper naming her as the true mastermind behind the revolutionary treatment proving you can never fake true ingenuity.The post Seven Brilliant Black Inventors You Never Learned About In History Class appeared first on All That's Interesting.