Ahead of his time

Kentucky native GARRETT A. MORGAN made lasting contributions as an inventor and entrepreneur

By Maryjean Wall

Wall

Garrett Augustus Morgan Sr. did not fy from the land that bore him, in Claysville, adjacent to Paris in Bourbon County. He took the slow route north, walking 70 miles to Cincinnati in 1891. Two years later, he hopped a train to Cleveland, where he settled. He was not the frst African American to leave Kentucky on foot and certainly not the last. But even as he said goodbye to his friends and family, he knew his only chance in life lay in one of the great Northern cities.

If you’ve been paying attention during Black History Month, you probably have heard of Morgan. He invented a smoke hood that evolved into the gas mask ubiquitous throughout Europe during World

War I. And this year marks the centennial of his receiving a U.S. patent for the trafc signal he devised, for which Paris has a celebration planned.

Many African Americans also knew Morgan through the natural hair care products he developed and marketed, most notably a popular hair straightener derived from plant-based ingredients. One success led to another afer his hair care business took of. He bought a house and an automobile, became a civic leader, and helped found a newspaper, the Cleveland Call. Memorials were installed in his honor in Cleveland and Washington, D. C. Paris put up historical markers attesting to his birthplace.

He was among numerous success stories to emerge from the Great Migration, a decades-long epoch that saw 6 million

Black persons leave the South for the North and for California. Tis phenomenon unfolded largely between 1910 and 1945, although the actual beginning and end were not so easily defned. As with any great movement of people, a few always went ahead of the crowd, and this was Morgan, leaving Paris with ambition writ large all over his youthful determination. He was 14 years old. He could have gone to Chicago, Bufalo, Detroit, Pittsburgh, or any of the major Northern industrial cities. During World War I, 1914-18, factories in the North began sending recruiters south to fnd labor to replace white workers who went into the armed forces. No one recruited Morgan, as he was an early traveler and on his own. He simply followed his dream. His grand-