In the fourth grade, we had to pick an inventor, dress like the inventor, and explain our invention. I decided to pick something off the wall (instead of, like, a light bulb), so I ended up doing my little presentation as George Crum. I remember reading about his work as a chef, learning about his shortness with customers, and the interaction (possibly apocryphal, although Crum certainly invented the potato chip) with the diner who kept complaining about his home fries being too thick.
I literally made a presentation as this man, and used a few websites and a couple encyclopediae (yeah, I’m old) to source all the data. I certainly know more than most people do about George Crum.
The point of all this is that, until I came across this post on Tumblr, I had absolutely no idea he was black. I’ve known who Crum was for over twenty years and never knew his race, because no website or encyclopedia thought it was worth mentioning.
Erasure is a fucking disease.
Wait @aurric if you had to dress like him for the presentation, wouldn’t you have had to look up a picture reference? How would you not know he was black?
It was 1995. I found encyclopedia articles and some old websites that referenced him as a chef, but never as a Black or Native man.
I dressed up like a chef.
i grew up before computers were common in libraries and kids were still taught the dewey decimal system and i also had no clue george crum was black til maybe five years ago. the world before internet was way different.
