Biden: “Black Man Invented Light Bulb, Not White Guy Named Edison”

On a campaign stop in Kenosha, Wisconsin, the former vice president and current presidential candidate Joe Biden made the claim that “a black man invented the light bulb, not a white guy named Edison.”

The 77-year-old made his remarks during a visit to the Grace Lutheran Church. Video clips taken from a C-SPAN broadcast of the event have gone viral on social media.

Thomas Edison patented the electric incandescent light bulb in 1878. Four years later, in 1882, a black inventor named Lewis Howard Latimer received a patent for “improving” the filament. Latimer did not invent or patent the electric light bulb.

Regardless, fact-checkers have rated Biden’s assertion as “mostly true.”