Garrett Morgan

Who was Garrett Morgan?

Garrett Augustus Morgan, Sr. was an African-American inventor and community leader. His most notable inventions included a type of protective respiratory hood, a traffic signal, and a hair-straightening chemical. He is renowned for a heroic rescue in 1916 in which he and three others used the safety hood device he'd developed to save workers trapped within a water intake tunnel, fifty feet beneath Lake Erie. He is also credited as the first African American in Cleveland, Ohio, to own an automobile.