“The Dignity of Invention”

Abstract This article explores an intellectual property dispute over the invention of the mechanized peanut picker in the early twentieth century, which led to one of the largest patent law cases at the time. The Benthall Machine Company sued three other companies for infringing on Benthall's patent rights, although all these companies were using peanut pickers based on the original design by a Black farmer and inventor named Benjamin Hicks, whose 1901 patent preceded Benthall's. Hicks's story reveals how discriminatory race relations in the Jim Crow South and capitalist imperatives led to white-owned businesses profiting from the intellectual work of Black innovators. Hicks's experience illuminates how much invention was an intrinsic part of farming and how Black intellectual labor, especially in the realm of agriculture, has consistently been undermined and downplayed.