Ahead of his time

2012 issue of Business History Review 86.

Cook used Morgan’s experience to illustrate this historic phenomenon of consumer pushback based on race. But she also found that Morgan devised a clever way around this obstacle in his path. Morgan hired a white actor to serve as front man for live demonstrations. Morgan held back, identifed on-site as the actual inventor but identifed as a Native American. He claimed to be Big Chief Mason from a Canadian tribe. Tis subterfuge removed any association of Blackness from Morgan’s smoke hood, transferring its origin to the Canadian Indigenous population. Te white actor did the talking for Morgan and sales orders began coming in.

Te orders kept on coming until Morgan was revealed for who he really was — an African American — in widespread newspaper coverage following a major disaster beneath Lake Erie at Cleveland. Workmen digging a water intake tunnel hit a pocket of natural gas and the explosion trapped them beneath the Great Lake. City authorities contacted Morgan. Tey asked him to come quickly with his smoke hood, perhaps not realizing he was African American, as he had been passing himself of as Big Chief Mason. Morgan and his brother, Frank, showed up at the scene and their race became evident to all through photos published in the newspapers. Morgan saved some of the trapped men and retrieved the bodies of others. But no longer could he hide behind his indigenous Canadian persona.

Garrett Morgan received two civic medals for his role in the disaster. Much to the Morgan family’s disappointment, the Carnegie Hero Fund Commission awarded its prestigious Hero Award to a man, white, whose role in the disaster had been minor. Morgan attributed this oversight to racism and urged the committee to overturn its decision, but this did not happen. Morgan also made the argument that the mayor of Cleveland only belatedly acknowledged the role of the Morgan brothers “and reluctantly because of their race.” Morgan wrote this in a letter to the mayor in 1917 that is included in the Garrett Morgan Papers held at Western Reserve Historical Society.

Even more startling was the negative efect this revelation of Morgan’s race had on sales of the safety hood. A number of Southern fre departments canceled orders for the breathing device afer becoming aware that a Black man had invented the respirator.

Morgan received validation of his work, however, when two business giants of the day, John D. Rockefeller and J. P. Morgan, publicly praised his scientific achievements. Additional recognition awaited Morgan upon his unveiling of his trafc signal in 1923. Te world had been waiting for this invention, as there was little to no safety for man, horse, or automobile at road intersections.

Automobiles were becoming ubiquitous on American roads throughout the 1920s, although in some places they still competed for road space with horsedrawn buggies. Road intersections were a jumble of vehicles all trying to go forward at the same time. Trafc signals in use had only two positions: stop and go. It was impossible to stop an automobile or even a fast-moving horse on a dime.

Morgan began thinking about a way to bring order to intersections afer he witnessed a collision between an automobile and a horse-drawn carriage. Te threeposition signal he devised was unique for the time because it allowed for a pause between stop and go, much like the yellow phase of trafc signals do today.

Morgan’s device lessened the danger of collision between automobiles or horse-drawn vehicles. It also gave pedestrians time to cross at the intersection. Morgan received a patent in 1923, and his invention was a signifcant milestone on the path of progress toward increased public safety on roadways.

Morgan never forgot his Bourbon County origins. In 1959 he welcomed a fellow Bourbon County native to Cleveland by the name of Lytle Davis, an educator who settled in Cleveland following military service. Te two had not known each other in Paris, but they made their acquaintance afer Davis attended his initial service at Antioch Baptist Church in Cleveland. Morgan was a longtime member of that church.

“Tey asked us [visitors] to stand and say where we were from,” said Davis, now 87 and chairman of that church’s social justice committee. “I got up and said, ‘I’m Lytle Davis from Paris, Kentucky.’ ” Te following day, Davis received a telephone call from Morgan. “He told me he was from Paris and had very fond memories of Kentucky.” Davis quite possibly told Morgan about delivering newspapers in his youth in Paris and how he played basketball for Paris Western High School the year his school won the National Negro High School Basketball Championship.

By the time Morgan died in 1963, he had been awarded four patents: two for his safety hood, and one each for the trafc signal and his hair “decurling” comb. Additional inventions were not patented: improvements to the sewing machine, various hair care and skin care products, an automatic cooker, hat and belt fasteners, a friction drive clutch, and a self-extinguishing cigarette flter. His entrepreneurial activities numbered at least fve businesses: the G.A. Morgan Hair Refning Co. (founded 1905), Morgan’s Cut-Rate Ladies Clothing Store (1909), National Safety Device Company (1912), the Cleveland Call newspaper (1920), and real estate development in the Wakeman Country Club (1923).

General Electric Co. purchased the rights to Morgan’s trafc signal for $40,000 in 1923, which in today’s dollars would have been about $697,099. Tat sum secured his family’s future. Granddaughter Sandra Morgan told how he arranged for any one of his ofspring who desired to work toward an advanced education to have the money available to pay for that education.

Toward the end of his life, Morgan lost most of his sight due to glaucoma. Still, he tinkered with inventions, coming up with his self-extinguishing cigarette. He was widely recognized in Cleveland, where the Garrett A. Morgan Water Treatment Plant and the Garrett A. Morgan Cleveland School of Science would be named for him. In Chicago and Lexington, elementary schools would be named for him. Prince George’s County in Maryland named a street for him, and a Washington Metro stop in Prince George’s County also is named in his memory.

Morgan’s granddaughter also said it is important to recognize the man beyond the parameters of Black History Month: “I don’t think Americans in general always appreciate the signifcant contributions that African Americans have made to this country, not only in their hard labor but also in their intellectual contributions made to the arts, to literature, to science, business, and to invention, which is signifcant.”

Garrett Morgan — inventor, entrepreneur, civic leader, and newspaper publisher — was simply doing whatever it took to get ahead. But, throughout that process he, too, contributed to history and a muchimproved American experience. KM