Ahead of his time

Tis was an unintended outcome, but one Morgan was to turn into the basis of his family’s eventual wealth. His next step was to ask his neighbor if he could apply some of his mixture to his Airedale dog. Te result was the dog’s curly hair turned straight.

Morgan then rubbed the mixture into his own hair. His hair turned straight. He had mixed nothing but plant-based ingredients into his formula, but the results were exciting. Tus, was born the G. A. Morgan Hair Refning Company, which eventually manufactured and marketed everything from pomades to a special hair-straightening comb.

He also successfully developed a formula for decreasing the friction on the sewing needles.

Morgan sold his hair products to Black beauty salons directly and to other consumers by mail order. Morgan’s way of marketing his hair products was the method popular back in the day: live demonstrations. He fnished each demonstration by taking a swallow of his hair straightener, to prove it was organic. He traveled to these demonstrations in a little truck that immediately drew attention: Morgan had attached signs to the sides, and in the rear he installed a calliope.

Sandra Morgan recalls her late uncle (John P. Morgan) accompanying Garrett Morgan on a few of those road trips when her uncle was a teenager. She said the road trips brought her uncle great angst.

“My uncle used to tell stories that he absolutely hated that truck with a burning passion,” Sandra said. “My uncle was a gifed musician and played classical piano and the organ beautifully. My grandfather would make my uncle play the calliope as they came into town. My uncle was 14 or 15 and trying to look suave and good for to purchase a home and an automobile. His hair-refning company was becoming known to African Americans across the United States. In fact, the G. A. Morgan Hair Refning Company lasted until well into the 1970s. Te hair products aided one portion of society, but Morgan’s later inventions benefted a much wider swath across the United States and beyond. the girls, and here he is playing the calliope, feeling foolish.”

The frst of these was the safety hood he invented in 1912. His desire was to sell his hoods to fre departments everywhere, as they were designed to allow the wearer to breathe while walking through heavy smoke. Prior to Morgan’s safety hood, fremen were unable to enter smoke-flled buildings due to the breathing hazard.

Morgan’s hood was primitive but genius for the time. William McHugh described the apparatus in an article for Kentucky Explorer: Te canvas hood had two breathing tubes that merged in the back to join at a sponge soaked in water. Te water in the sponge fltered out the smoke.

Uncle John might have worried about looking foolish, but Garrett, his father, was just doing what his personal creed had always dictated: Do whatever you must to get ahead. If this meant driving a truck into town with his son playing the calliope in the back, well, that was doing whatever you had to. Te orders for hair products began rolling in.

Morgan’s rising success enabled him

Morgan patented his device in 1914. Almost as soon as he readied the device for sale, Morgan came face to face with the reality that all African American inventors faced. He had envisioned fre departments eagerly purchasing his smoke hood. Tis did not happen on the scale he had anticipated.

Te reason was his race. Black inventors of Morgan’s time were uniformly running up against a wall of consumer resistance, as Lisa D. Cook has written from her post at Michigan State College. Her “Overcoming Discrimination by Consumers during the Age of Segregation: the Example of Garrett Morgan” appeared in the summer