The Photograph Confusion
Any reader who has encountered Bessie Blount Griffin’s story online may have seen photographs circulating with her name that are actually of someone else.
This confusion was documented and fact-checked by Snopes in November 2025 in the context of their verification of the Marie Van Brittan Brown home security story. Some social media posts about Marie Van Brittan Brown used photographs that actually showed Bessie Blount Griffin. Separately, some posts about Bessie Blount Griffin have used photographs that showed different people.
The specific confusion documented by Snopes is that photographs purporting to be of Marie Van Brittan Brown actually showed Bessie Blount Griffin. This misattribution circulated on multiple platforms.
The irony is significant: two overlooked Black women inventors, both primarily recognized in the specific context of Black history awareness rather than in mainstream historical accounts, were having their photographs confused with each other by the very social media campaigns attempting to recognize them.
The confusion reflects a combination of factors: the relatively sparse photo documentation of both women’s lives (neither was extensively photographed in the context of public recognition during their active years), and the rapid distribution of unverified images on social media platforms where error-checking is minimal.
Correcting this confusion is part of the basic historical work of accurately documenting both women’s lives. They were distinct people with distinct contributions, and treating them as interchangeable — even inadvertently, even in the context of an attempt at recognition — repeats the same basic failure of attention that allowed their contributions to go unrecognized in the first place.