Why I waste my time on this stuff, I don't know. But I was curious to see if Robert F. Flemming, Jr., had actually developed some variation or adjunct to the guitar that could be considered noteworthy. The best I could come up with was

1. A repetition of the list with expressions of pride and admonitions about how much the world owed to multitudes of black inventors;

2. Angry but factless attempts to refute the list, posted by folks who were pretty obviously in a white-supremacist bag; and

3. The most reasonable, posted by people who identified themselves as black, who said that this list is absolutely ridiculous, and that those who insist on repeating it during Black History Month undercuts the validity of Black History Month and gives ammunition to racists.

On one forum, a black man felt sufficiently incensed by the silliness of the list and what it did to the cause of credibility that he did a fairly monumental amount of work taking each claimed invention and writing a brief history of how it really came about. Unfortunately, whatever Robert F. Flemming, Jr., may or may not have done regarding the guitar was not included, but the poster certainly made his point.

HERE. Scroll down to "Lurker" and his "Black Invention Myths" post.

As to the guitar, I am perfectly willing to give Flemming credit for anything he may have added to the guitar that was useful or advantageous, but the claim that he "invented" it is patently (pun intended) ridiculous.

Don Firth