Library Guides: Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Resources for Engineering: Biographies: BIPOC engineers

Biographies & profiles of BIPOC engineers

BIPOC stands for "Black, Indigenous, and People of Color"--BIPOC people have always been involved in engineering and inventing. However, due to persistent biases in the publishing world there are very few full-length books providing biographies or memoirs of these engineers.

Searches to try

Try these search terms in the ISU Library's Quick Search to find materials on this topic.

You may notice some gaps here. This isn't an oversight on the part of the ISU Library--there just aren't many books in this area to purchase, and much of what does get published is aimed at children rather than an academic audience.

Articles & podcasts

Lost Women of Science Podcast: The First Lady of Engineering
The third season of Lost Women of Science details the story of African American mechanical engineer Y.Y. Clark.
Meet The First 2 Black Women To Be Inducted Into The National Inventors Hall Of Fame
From NPR, brief profiles of the first two Black women inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame.
Native American Engineers: Between Worlds
From ASME, explores the stories of several Native American mechanical engineers.
Stories of Indigenous Engineering
From Engineers Without Borders Australia, stories of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander scientists and engineers.

Books at the Library

Born and Raised in Sawdust by Lewis Thigpen PE
Call Number: TA140 T378x 2019
Born and Raised in Sawdust: My Journey Around the World in Eighty Years is the autobiography of Lewis Thigpen as a black boy growing up in a loving family in a small, tight knit community in the deep South during the extremely segregated Jim Crow era. Despite adversity and lack of money, he attended college, earned a Ph.D., and became a renowned engineer, research scientist, and scholar. He rose to become chair of mechanical engineering at a distinguished university.
Bridging Deep South Rivers by John S. Lupold; Thomas L. French; Thomas L. French
Call Number: E185.97.K49 L87 2004
Horace King (1807-1885) built covered bridges over every large river in Georgia, Alabama, and eastern Mississippi. That King, who began life as a slave in Cheraw, South Carolina, received no formal training makes his story all the more remarkable. This is the first major biography of the gifted architect and engineer who used his skills to transcend the limits of slavery and segregation and become a successful entrepreneur and builder.
Hidden Figures by Margot Lee Shetterly
Call Number: QA27.5 .L44 2016
Hidden Figures follows the interwoven accounts of Dorothy Vaughan, Mary Jackson, Katherine Johnson and Christine Darden, four African American women who participated in some of NASA's greatest successes. It chronicles their careers over nearly three decades they faced challenges, forged alliances and used their intellect to change their own lives, and their country's future.
A Life Constructed by Delon Hampton; Bob Keefe (As told to)
Call Number: Online
This book shares a rich vision for a more equitable workplace and necessary change in the disciplines of engineering. It is also an inspiring story of how through hard work, determination, and strong relationships, a young boy from the wrong side of the tracks could still achieve the American dream.
Lucean Arthur Headen by Jill D. Snider
Call Number: TL140.H425 S65 2020
Born in Carthage, North Carolina, Lucean Arthur Headen (1879-1957) grew up amid former slave artisans. Inspired by his grandfather, a wheelwright, and great-uncle, a toolmaker, he dreamed as a child of becoming an inventor. He eventually earned eleven patents, most for innovative engine designs and anti-icing methods for aircraft. Though Headen left few personal records, Jill D. Snider recreates the life of this extraordinary man through historical detective work in newspapers, business and trade publications, genealogical databases, and scholarly works.
Think Black by Clyde W. Ford
Call Number: QA76.2 F67 A3 2019
In this thought-provoking and heartbreaking memoir, an award-winning writer tells the story of his father, John Stanley Ford, the first black software engineer at IBM, revealing how racism insidiously affected his father's view of himself and their relationship.
We Could Not Fail by Richard Paul; Steven Moss
Call Number: TL521.312 .P39 2015
We Could Not Fail tells the inspiring, largely unknown story of how shooting for the stars helped to overcome segregation on earth. Richard Paul and Steven Moss profile ten pioneer African American space workers whose stories illustrate the role NASA and the space program played in promoting civil rights.
Don't Let Engineering Ruin Your Life by Dusty Walker
Call Number: TA157 W298x 2016
This book is part autobiographical and part self-help. I am telling my personal story while giving what i hope to be good, sound advice for those of you who may be leaning towards engineering as a profession (having less than five years' experience in a technical field and are still fairly flexible in your career or choice of area of study); or you have more than 10 years' experience and need a good laugh and/or shot glass of bitterness to get your career and zest for life jumpstarted again.
Overnight Code by Paige Bowers; David Montague
Call Number: VM140 M778 B69 2021
Raye Montague was an ambitious little girl in segregated Little Rock. Where some saw roadblocks, Montague only saw hurdles that needed to be overcome. Her mindset helped her become the first person to draft a Naval ship design by computer, using a program she worked late nights to debug. She did this as a single mother during the height of the Cold War, all the while imbuing her son with the hard-won wisdom she had accumulated throughout the years. Equal parts coming-of-age tale, civil rights history, and reflection on the power of education, Overnight Code is a tale about persistence and perseverance when the odds against you seem insurmountable.
African-American Inventions That Changed the World the World by Michael Carson
Call Number: Q141 C25 2017
This book contains short biographical profiles, information on inventions, and patent numbers for African American inventors from the 1800s to today. A considerable amount of the world's most influential inventors have been African-American, which is a fact that is often overlooked. Throughout history, African-Americans inventors have played a pivotal role in creating revolutionary inventions that has impacted our lives in various ways. These pioneers have contributed to the fields of medicine, agriculture, science and technology, to name a few.

Biography collections

African American National Biography by Henry Louis Gates and Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham (editors)
Call Number: E185.96 A4466 2008 (Tier 2 - Reference Collection)
8-volume set containing over 4,000 entries. AANB presents history through the lives of individuals, showcasing the influence of persons of African descent in the U.S. from the arrival of Esteban in Spanish Florida in 1529 through to notable black citizens of the present day.

The following dataset can be used to identify engineers and inventors from the pre-Abolition era that have been profiled in the AANB:

Niven, Steven J., 2021, "Enslaved People in the African American National Biography, 1508-1865", https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/FIEYGJ, Harvard Dataverse, V3, UNF:6:+xCci5GUcKGj3fDuuyiDxw== [fileUNF]

For biographies only available in the 2013 edition of the AANB, or to receive a PDF copy of a biography from the 2008 edition in Parks Library, please use Interlibrary Loan.

Interlibrary Loan & Document Delivery
Use Interlibrary Loan to request books and articles that the ISU Library does not own.

Biography databases

In these databases, it helps to know in advance who you are looking for, as biographies for people of color and people from other underrepresented groups are not typically marked as such in search results or lists of people. For example, you can browse for African Americans but would need to identify engineers by looking the people up elsewhere or viewing their biographies. You can also browse by people in science or engineering, but there is no indicator on that page as to which people belong to underrepresented groups.

Biography in Context This link opens in a new window
Contains biographies from 170+ reference books with content from authoritative journals, periodicals, web sites and multimedia sources.
American National Biography This link opens in a new window
Provides biographies of significant, influential, or notorious figures from American history from pre-colonial times to the present day - - written by prominent scholars. Only covers deceased individuals.

You can filter your results to just men or just women in American National Biography, which may help narrow things down if you are interested in men or women of color in particular. (A whopping 3 out of 200+ biographies for engineers in this database are women as of November 2022.)