The purpose of this petition is to acknowledge underrepresented African Americans and give them the recognition they need. Many Africans Americans are being underrepresented and not getting credit for the amazing achievements that they have made. If you have a car or a mobile device, then most of the time you use your GPS. Have you ever wondered who is responsible for such a useful feature?

Have you ever heard of Gladys West? I'm sure you haven't heard of her because when you search who invented the GPS three White men come up: Ivan A. Getting, Bradford Parkinson, and Roger L. Easton. Although they contributed to the creation of the GPS, Gladys West’s achievement go unnoticed unless you search her name directly. We believe that because she is an African American woman, she didn't get the recognition she deserve.

Our 8th grade team came up with an idea to give Gladys her recognition. We decided to conduct an experiment. We wanted to see if we could complete 10,000 inquiries in a week on popular search engines and by doing so if we could change the search engine algorithm so that Gladys West would appear with Ivan A. Getting, Bradford Parkinson, and Roger L. Easton. Unfortunately, did not get our desired result, but Dr. Gladys West did come up under related searches when she did not before. Gladys West needs to be publicly recognized for her work. History repeats itself as more and more African Americans are not acknowledged for their contributions to our society.

We are petitioning to Google, Bing, and Yahoo, to make an effort to ensure that African-Americans who make contributions to inventions and society are recognized the same as their White counterparts. In that time, when the GPS was created and other scientific inventions/advancements, White men were credited more than the women and African-Americans, with the latter having fewer rights. Anyone that contributes to an invention should be recognized no matter their race, gender, or religion.