American women once were not allowed to hold patents. In fact, the property of married women once legally belonged to their husbands. However, Martha McCaughey, professor of women's studies at Virginia Tech, pointed out that the woman who invented the perm for women's hair was Marjorie Joyner, a woman from the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia who in 1926 became the first African American woman ever to hold a patent for an invention. While it didn't make her rich, it "did pave the way for many women inventors and African Americans in education and business."