Garrett Morgan was born in 1877 in Paris, Kentucky. His parents were Sydney Morgan and Elizabeth Reed, who were both formerly enslaved.
Morgan left his family’s farm at the age of 14 and moved to Cincinnati with many ideas of what he could accomplish. He did this armed with only a 6th-grade education. Taking a job at a sewing machine factory, he became curious about how he could improve the machinery. His first invention was a belt fastener that helped the machines run more efficiently.
Mary Oluonye describes him as “a brilliant thinker and a creative problem solver.” She’s the author of the biography, “Garrett Augustus Morgan: Businessman, Inventor, Good Citizen.”
“He demonstrated the importance of having faith and confidence in yourself, of using your mind to conceive ideas,” she said.
Garrett Morgan would go on to invent a safety hood, a variety of Black hair care products, and most notably — a three-way traffic signal.
Oftentimes, Black inventors are reduced to the sum of their achievements, when people focus on the final product, the invention, as the most important thing, said Rayvon Fouche, a professor and associate dean for graduate education at Northwestern University in Illinois.
But this can overshadow the pathway to those successes.
“Not understanding and celebrating just how amazing these folks were to say, ‘I know I'm not considered a full human being. … I’m not considered worthy, but I'm just going to put all that to the side and just go for it.’ And that’s the part that’s amazing,” Fouche said.
Garrett Morgan’s granddaughter, Sandra Morgan, said he’s an inspiration to her family, and that people often lionized him. But he’s much more than the sum of his achievements, and she hopes people will take the time to learn more about him.
“I hope that they will explore him as a full person and learn more about his civic endeavors, his aspects of family life," Sandra Morgan said.
Overcoming obstacles
After Morgan moved to Cleveland, he noticed that firefighters struggled with smoke inhalation. He studied up on absorbent filters and created a safety hood that was a precursor to the gas masks used in World War I.
Morgan used that safety hood to save people’s lives during a tunnel explosion underneath Lake Erie. The Cleveland Waterworks company was building water pipes, and a gas explosion left 80 people trapped underground. Oluonye said the police called on Morgan to help.
“There were rescue attempts being made, but at one point they remembered Garrett Morgan, and they remembered seeing a demonstration of a safety hood that Garrett Morgan had,” she said.
Morgan, his brother and two other volunteers risked their lives to help rescue two men and recover four bodies.
But Morgan didn’t get any of the credit for the rescue. And when people discovered Morgan was Black, many refused to buy his products.
“That didn’t stop him. He continued on with his creations and his work, but it was disappointing,” Oluonye said.
A replica of the hood lives at the Cleveland History Center of the Western Reserve Historical Society, along with the three-way traffic signal prototype. Morgan was inspired to create the signal after witnessing a carriage accident at a Cleveland intersection.
Chad Malkamaki, the visitor services manager at WRHS, said the exhibits on display show everything from Morgan’s patents to his curling iron and hair care products to images from his photo collection.
“We have a flip booklet for our youth entrepreneurship education program, where students have six different entrepreneurs from the Cleveland region that they look at their products, look at their customers and then they redesign one of the products to sell,” Malkamaki said.
Garrett Morgan was a lifelong learner. He hired tutors for himself, listened to radio stories and surrounded himself with educated people, according to his granddaughter.
Morgan also founded the Call and Post, a newspaper in Cleveland that is still functioning today. He also purchased over 100 acres of farmland that would be turned into Wakeman Country Club, one of Ohio’s first recreational clubs developed by an African American.
A hundred years later, his descendants still gather there.
A well-rounded person
Sandra Morgan was not able to get to know her grandfather herself, since he died when she was around two years old. But she has gotten to know him through the stories of her family, specifically, her father, Garrett Morgan’s namesake.
“Within our family, we were well aware of our legacy and our history and used that as a springboard to our own achievements and our own growth,” Sandra said.
Sandra said her grandfather is best understood both through his inventions and his interactions with others. He would go to barber shops around town and convince people to try out his hair products — using some surprising tactics.
“He would drink a big gulp of the black hair oil stain. Everyone would be mortified, and he said, ‘You see, it's made with cod liver oil, so it's not going to hurt you. You can put this in your hair [or] have a swig, and you'll be just fine,” she said.
Her family’s motto: You can always do more. She said while Garrett Morgan is an icon in her family, they’re also well aware of his humanity.
“He's not on a pedestal. He was a well-rounded person, not just an inventor or a figure that could easily have clay feet,” Sandra said.
This idea—that Black inventors are often painted as one-dimensional—is something Rayvon Fouche, the Northwestern professor, has thought a lot about. He’s the author of “Black Inventors in the Age of Segregation: Granville T. Woods, Lewis H. Latimer, and Shelby J. Davidson.”
He said Black inventors are often reduced to the sum of their achievements, especially during times like Black History Month.
“You had these lists of Black inventors where you get a circumscribed representation of them. It's a name, a patent number and an invention, and that flattens the experience of who these people were,” said Fouche.
One way to avoid this pitfall, he said, is to consider the whole person, including the journey people took to achieve the things they accomplished.
Mary Oluonye—his biographer—hopes people who learn about Garrett Morgan are inspired.
“Now, if he could do that, when he did that, with all the challenges that he faced, then you, too, can do anything you want to do, once you put your mind to it,” she said.
This story is made possible by the America 250 Ohio Commission.
