"Lions of Industry, Mothers of Invention" looks at the lives and work of amazing African American entrepreneurs and inventors who overcame immense odds to succeed. This production was the third in the series performed by the Smithsonian Discovery Theater and arranged and sponsored by the Conservancy at two DCPS schools (Takoma Educational Center and Shepherd ES).  The characters include beauty innovator Madam C.J. Walker, agricultural chemist and painter George Washington Carver, and academic giant Booker T. Washington, founder of the Tuskegee Institute. Also depicted are the "Father of Chicago", Haitian American Jean Baptiste Point du Sable and his Native American wife, Kittahawa, potato chip inventor George Crum, and John Murphy, a freed slave who started the newspaper The Afro-American, one of the most influential publications of the early twentieth century.