Bessie Blount Griffin was born on November 24, 1914[2] in the Hickory, Virginia community of Princess Anne County (now known as the city of Chesapeake).
[3]Bessie ' Blount attended Diggs Chapel - a one-room schoolhouse built by Black members of the local community - in Hickory, Virginia.
[3][2] During her career as a physical therapist, after World War II, many soldiers returned as amputees after being wounded in combat.
As a part of Blount's physical therapy exercises, she taught veterans who had lost the ability to use their hands, new ways to perform everyday tasks by substituting the use of their teeth and feet.
[5] While working at the Bronx Hospital in New York, at thirty-seven years old, Blount invented an electric self-feeding apparatus for amputees.
She used plastic, boiling water to mold the material, a file, ice pick, hammer, and some dishes to create a prototype of her invention.
[6] She devised a neck frame for an injured or ill patient, that holds a bowl or cup close to their face as a "portable receptacle support" and in April 1951, Blount was granted U.S. patent 2,550,554.
[8] The basin was a kidney-shaped disposable cardboard dish made out of flour, water, and newspaper that was baked until the material was hard.
[4] In 1969, Blount embarked on a second career, in law enforcement, pursuing forensic science research for police departments in New Jersey and Virginia.
In 1977, the Metropolitan Police (Scotland Yard) Forensic Science Laboratory invited Blount to join them in London for advanced studies in graphology.
[4] At sixty-three years old, she was the first Black woman to be accepted into the advanced studies at the Document Division of Scotland Yard.
[2] Blount made numerous attempts to interest the VA in her inventions but they declined, despite the devices' evident beneficial impact.
"[5] Blount wrote a featured columns for the African-American newspapers, the N.J. Herald News and the Philadelphia Independent [11] covering everything from Fidel Castro’s visit to Harlem to Lyndon Johnson’s presidential nomination.
[2] In 2008 she undertook but was unable to complete one more project: founding a museum on the grounds of her old Virginia schoolhouse which had burned down, to commemorate the contributions of those who had studied there.