Autry J. Pruitt brings passion and reverence to Black history, not by rewriting it, but by spotlighting the extraordinary within its authentic truth. In a special segment honoring Black American icons, Pruitt offered personal reflections on three towering figures—Stagecoach Mary, Lewis Latimer, and George Washington Carver—underscoring the grit, ingenuity, and unfiltered courage that define their legacies.
Stagecoach Mary, a gun-toting mail carrier in the American West, struck a personal chord with Pruitt—his own mother was a postal worker. But Mary’s story, he emphasized, wasn’t just personal—it was powerful. “She didn’t care that she was a woman,” he said. “She didn’t care what men thought.” Her unapologetic independence and embrace of Second Amendment rights made her, in Pruitt’s eyes, the original Black feminist.
He praised Lewis Latimer not as a revisionist invention of the left, but as a pivotal figure in American innovation. While Latimer didn’t invent the light bulb, he made it accessible—much like Henry Ford didn’t invent the car, but revolutionized how America used it. “That’s even more American,” Pruitt noted, celebrating Latimer’s contribution as a democratizer of technology.
Of George Washington Carver, Pruitt marveled at a man who earned his master’s in agriculture at a time when Black intellectual achievement was routinely dismissed. Carver’s invitation from Booker T. Washington to teach at Tuskegee stood as a testament to his brilliance and resilience. “He is an example,” Pruitt said, “for all Americans—white, Black, Asian.”
In closing, Pruitt rejected the notion of distorting history. “You don’t have to erase white history to celebrate Black history,” he affirmed. For Pruitt, these figures stand tall not as tokens of revisionist identity politics—but as towering Americans whose courage and contributions inspire across race, time, and ideology.
