Black Genius: Unit 4: Inventors & Innovators

By Ms Nakia K Navarro

Black Genius: Unit 4 - Inventors & Innovators

Inventors & Innovators challenges students to rethink who gets credited for shaping the modern world. In this unit, learners explore how Black innovators across engineering, life sciences, mathematics, computer science, digital systems, and music identified real problems in their communities and designed solutions that continue to impact everyday life.

Through rich biographies, primary sources, and hands-on activities, students examine inventors and creators whose contributions have often been overlooked or erased-from life-saving medical breakthroughs and public safety systems to musical innovations that reshaped global culture. Rather than presenting invention as isolated brilliance, this unit frames innovation as human-centered, community-driven, and deeply connected to lived experience.

Students analyze music as historical evidence, investigate medical and rehabilitation science, explore engineering and everyday systems, and apply systems thinking to digital and mathematical concepts. Critical discussions invite learners to consider how race, access, and power influence whose ideas are remembered, patented, or celebrated-and why reclaiming these stories matters today.

What Students Will Explore

Music, arts, and cultural innovation as systems of influence

Engineering solutions for safety, accessibility, and daily life

Life science breakthroughs in medicine and rehabilitation

Mathematics, computer science, and digital communication systems

Patterns of innovation, resilience, and historical erasure

Instructional Features

Inquiry-based and project-based learning

Interdisciplinary STEM + Humanities integration

Primary source analysis and real-world connections

Built-in quizzes, reflections, and discussion prompts

Teacher-friendly structure with answer keys and resources

Designed for culturally responsive and inclusive classrooms

Ideal For5 -10th grade school studentsClassrooms, homeschools, and microschoolsEducators seeking rigorous, equity-centered curriculumFamilies looking for meaningful learning beyond a single monthBlack Genius: Unit 4 - Inventors & Innovators empowers students to see innovation not as something done to communities, but something created by them-and to recognize themselves as the next generation of thinkers, designers, and problem-solvers.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B0H2LYC21Q
• ISBN13: 9798247115137
• Release Date: March 2026
• Publisher: Independently Published
• Length: 184 Pages
• Weight: 0.97 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 8.5" x 11.0"