By Cedric M. Stroud

Garrett Morgan was born in Claysville, a small town near Paris, Kentucky on March 4, 1877, the seventh of eleven children to his father Sydney Morgan and his mother Elizabeth Reed Morgan, both former slaves.

In 1893, 16-year-old Garrett, with only a 6thgrade education, left home to seek job opportunities in Cincinnati, Ohio. He worked as a handyman where he developed a variety of skills while working on the machines. Garrett also paid people to tutor him in order to improve his education.

In 1895, he moved to Cleveland, Ohio. At first, businesses refused to hire Garrett because of his color, but eventually found work sweeping floors. He later worked as a skilled machine repairman, first at H. Black Company, then by the L.N. Gross Company, both manufacturers of women’s clothing.

Garrett’s first invention was a friction clutch drive device that kept the belt drives on sewing machines adjusted and at the proper tension. This improved the efficiency of the machines and saved the company money. Garrett sold this invention to the L.N. Gross Company for $150.

Garrett met Mary Ann Hasick, a white woman who worked as a seamstress at the L.N. Gross Company, In 1907, Garrett quit this job and took his savings to start a business selling and repairing sewing machines. The following year, he married Hasick. This union produced three sons.

In 1909, Garrett and his wife opened a tailoring shop that manufactured clothing and employed 32 workers. While working on a chemical solution to apply to a sewing machine needle so that the friction caused by its movement would not scorch the woolen clothes material, Garrett discovered that this solution instead caused fuzzy material to straighten out. He developed the Morgan’s Hair Relaxer Cream, one of the first human hair straightening products for men.

Garrett organized the G.A. Morgan Hair Refining Company in 1913, which manufactured and sold various hair products. Garrett also patented and sold a “heavy hair-pressing heat-retaining comb”.

In 1914, Garrett received a patent for a safety hood that a fireman could place over his head to breathe comfortably in the midst of smoke from a fire. Garrett established the National Safety Device Company to market this device. He encouraged African Americans in Clevelandto invest in the company, but only one did. The company’s officers were white except for Garrett who became the general manager.

Garrett knew that if firefighting and mining companies learned that this invention was made by an African American, that many would not buy it. Often, he had one of the white officers pretend that he was Garrett Morgan while Garrett would demonstrate the Safety Hood pretending to be an Indian chief from Canada. At the National Association of Fire Chiefs Conference in New Orleans in 1914, Garrett watched as a gold medal was awarded to his impersonator.

Later that year, Morgan demonstrated the safety hood at the Second International Exposition of Safety and Sanitation in New York City and received a first prize gold medal. During this Exposition, firemen came to grab any available hoods to help rescue victims of a subway disaster.

On July 24, 1916, an explosion occurred at the Cleveland Water Works plant. 32 men were trapped in a tunnel filled with smoke, dust, and poisonous gases. Garrett and his brother Frank, along with two white men, went into the tunnel wearing Morgan Safety Hoods. Garrett’s rescue party was able to save six men still alive, but only two survived.

Sales of the Safety Hood increased until it was found that its inventor was an African American. Nevertheless, Garrett’s invention was improved upon and used by the United States Army as gas masks in World War I.

On November 20, 1923, Garrett received patent number 1,475,024 for the first folding automatic tri-color traffic signal. Previously, there were signals with “go and stop” or green and red colors, but Garrett’s invention became the forerunner of the modern automatic traffic signal that has green, yellow, and red lights. He sold the rights to General Electric for $40,000, a sizeable amount of money in 1923.

Garrett died July 17, 1963 in Cleveland, Ohio. In 2005, he was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame (NIHF), for his inventions of the gas mask and the three-way traffic signal.

The NIHF, located in Alexandria, Virginia near the United States Patent and Trademark Office, is an American not-for-profit organization, founded in 1973, which recognizes individual engineers and inventors who hold a U.S. patent of significant technology. The purpose of NIHF is to honor the women and men responsible for the great technological advances that make human, social and economic progress possible.

Some References:

Haber, Louis. Black Pioneers of Science and Invention. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1970.

Cedric Michael Stroud, Founder and President of the African American History Publishing Company, LLC, (AAHPC, LLC), has conducted over 40 years of independent research on the history of Black inventors and scientists. His company’s first publication is the Man Know Thyself 2022 Calendar: Centuries of Inventions and Innovations by Persons of Black / African Descent.