Samuel Raymond Scottron was a prominent African-American inventor from Brooklyn, N.Y. who began his career as a barber. He was born in Philadelphia in 1841. He received his engineering degree from Cooper Union in 1878.
He was a community leader in New York, setting up organizations to promote racial harmony and fairness, as well as a public speaker and writer on race relations. He was a member of the Brooklyn board of education, and a leader in the Republican Party. He fought for the end of slavery in Cuba and Puerto Rico.
He invented a special mirror bracket which allowed you to see yourself as others see you. He went on to receive 4 more patents.
Here are his inventions and patent numbers.
His grandson, Charles Scottron, played for the Smart Set Athletic Club basketball team, one of the Black Fives teams, which were basketball leagues in the period between 1900 and 1940, when racial segregation was institutionalized, in which African-American players in New York, Washington, D.C., Chicago and Pittsburgh, and later other cities, engaged in community-based and inter-city leagues and rivalries.
Scottron was the maternal grandfather of noted singer Lena Horne (1917–2010).