Ford Freedom Awards Dinner celebrates technopreneurs at Charles Wright Museum

This year, the Ford Freedom Award honoree was Elijah McCoy. The son of fugitive slaves, the Michigan-raised McCoy trained as a mechanical engineer and went on to receive nearly 60 patents, many of them involving lubrication for steam engines.
One invention, an automatic lubricator, distributed oil evenly over an engine’s moving parts, allowing locomotives and other machinery to run continuously for long periods of time without pausing for maintenance. McCoy died in Detroit in 1929.
This year a special Legacy Award was given to Mitch Kapor and his wife, Freada Kapor Klein. The two were honored for their philanthropic efforts toward educational access, diversification in technology to include more Blacks and Latinos and Latinas, and also creating technological social impact in various underrepresented communities.