In Popular Culture
- 1966, an ad for Old Taylor bourbon used a photo of Elijah McCoy and the expression "the real McCoy", ending in this tag line: "But the most famous legacy McCoy left his country was his name."
- 2006, the Canadian playwright Andrew Moodie wrote a play called The Real McCoy, which portrays McCoy's life, the challenges he faced as an African American, and the development of his inventions. It was first produced in Toronto in 2006. It has also been produced in the United States, as in Saint Louis, Missouri in 2011, where it was performed by the Black Rep Theatre.
- In the book Noughts and Crosses by Malorie Blackman which is set in a fictional racial dystopia where the role of black and white people in society has been reversed, he is mentioned among a list of African-American scientists, inventors and pioneers when the characters are in a history class. Blackman includes a note at the end of the book about how men mentioned are real but she never learned about them in school. Blackman uses the list to highlight how African-Americans might be excluded from the history books in favour of White pioneers.
Read more about this topic: Elijah McCoy
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