black history month: Garrett morgan

Garrett Morgan can be thanked for his role in inventing traffic control.
        Born in Paris, Kentucky, on March 4, 1877, Garrett Morgan was the seventh of 11 children. His mother, Elizabeth Reed, was of Indian and African descent, and the daughter of a Baptist minister. His father, Sydney, a former slave freed in 1863, was the son of John Hunt Morgan, a Confederate colonel. Garrett Morgan's mixed race heritage would play a part in his business dealings as an adult.
        With only an elementary school education, he began his career as a sewing-machine mechanic. He started his own sewing machine business, which enabled him to sponsor many more inventions. He went on to patent several inventions, including an improved sewing machine and traffic signal, a hair-straightening product, and a respiratory device that would later provide the blueprint for WWI gas masks. The inventor died on July 27, 1963, in Cleveland, Ohio.

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