The first and only black-owned automobile in history was the Patterson-Greenfield Automobile Company, pioneered by Frederick Patterson and his father Charles R. Patterson. #BlackHistoryMonth —Frederick Douglas Patterson was the first African American to build motorized cars. His father, Charles Rich Patterson created C. R. Patterson and Sons Company located in Greenfield, Ohio. Beginning in 1865, the company built fashionable carriages. Frederick Patterson inherited the company upon the death of his father in 1910 and began building motorized vehicles. The first Patterson automobile, the Patterson-Greenfield, rolled off the line on Sept 23, 1915. Unfortunately, Henry Ford debuted the Model T on Oct 1, 1908 and by that point had captured most of the American car-buying market. —Named after abolitionist Frederick Douglass, Patterson was born on Sept 17, 1871 in Greenfield, Ohio to Josephine and Charles Richard. In 1888, Patterson attended Ohio State University where he played football and may have been the first Black player at the school on the varsity team. His passion, however, lay in the family business so he moved home in 1897 and joined his father and brother at C.R. Patterson and Sons. When his father died in 1910, Frederick assumed leadership of the business. —The Patterson-Greenfield sold for $850 and was reputed to be a higher quality automobile than Henry Ford’s “Tin Lizzy” or Model T. The Patterson-Greenfield car had a forty horsepower Continental four-cylinder engine and reached a top speed of fifty miles per hour. Unfortunately, the Model T had cornered the automobile market. It sold initially for $825 in 1908 when first introduced to the public, but over the years as Ford production expanded, the price by 1915 was $360, the year the first Patterson-Greenfield debuted. —From 1915 to 1920, the company produced 150 Patterson vehicles of two styles, the two-door roadster and the big four-door touring car. The company slogan, “If it’s a Patterson, it’s a good one” described the company’s carriages as well as the motor vehicles. C.R. Patterson and Sons, however, could not obtain capital to continue manufacturing the automobiles. By 1920 it had shifted production to buses and trucks and Patterson renamed the company to the Greenfield Bus Body Company. During the 1930s competition from Detroit became increasingly more intense. —If you appreciate what I do, please support me on Ko-fi & follow for history blog posts! ko-fi.com/africanarchives Thank you! 📚💫 Donations are NOT required but they are appreciated.—

4 years before Rosa Parks ignited the Montgomery Bus boycott by refusing to give up her seat in Alabama, there was PFC Sarah Keys from the Keyesville neighborhood of Washington, NC, who when traveling from Fort Dix in NJ back home to Washington, NC on August 1, 1951, was told to relinquish her seat to a white Marine and move to the back of the bus. Keys refused to move, thus the driver emptied the bus, directed the other passengers to another vehicle, and barred Keys from boarding it. When Keys asked why she shouldn’t ride the bus, she was arrested and spent 13 hours in a cell. Keys was eventually ordered to pay a $25 fine for disorderly conduct, was released, and put on a bus to her hometown. Her case was brought before the Interstate Commerce Commission with Dovey Johnson Roundtree as her lawyer and wasn’t settled until 1955. In Sarah Keys v. Carolina Coach Company, the ICC favored Keys, ruling the Interstate Commerce Act forbids segregation.