On March 4, Cuyahoga County once again marked Garrett Morgan Day, honoring an iconic Clevelander most people know because of two of his inventions: the gas mask and the traffic light.
The county declared Morgan’s birthday Garrett Morgan Day for the first time in 2024. Cuyahoga County Executive Chris Ronayne said, “We hope residents feel a renewed appreciation for how one person’s creativity and determination can shape the world.”
Garrett Augustus Morgan did not arrive in Cleveland as a trained scientist. He came north as a teenager from Kentucky with limited formal education and a skill that sounds almost ordinary: he could fix sewing machines. In the late 1800s, sewing machines were mini mechanical ecosystems — with gears, belts, timing systems. If you could repair them, you understood motion, air, resistance and friction and how these parts spoke to each other. That mechanical curiosity became Morgan’s classroom.
He first worked in garment factories and later operated his own tailoring shop — including a location along Superior Avenue. Cleveland at the turn of the 20th century had its share of problems to solve, and Morgan paid attention to the city around him.
One of his earliest financial successes wasn’t a safety device at all. While experimenting with fabric treatments, Morgan developed a hair-straightening cream and launched the G.A. Morgan Hair Refining Co. The business gave him the financial independence that allowed him to experiment further.
Morgan’s notable inventions
In 1914, he patented a “safety hood,” a breathing device that pulled cleaner air from near the ground — a precursor to the modern gas mask. Two years later, in 1916, when an explosion during construction of a water intake tunnel beneath Lake Erie trapped workers underground, Morgan brought his device to the scene. He and his brother descended into smoke-filled conditions to rescue men who had been overcome by toxic fumes.
The story later became legend — even as early media accounts often minimized his role.
Years later, Morgan witnessed a serious traffic accident at a busy Cleveland intersection. As automobiles, horse-drawn carriages and pedestrians competed for space, he saw what others accepted as chaos and imagined structure. His 1923 patent introduced a three-position traffic signal — stop, go and the all-important interval in between — which created the pause that reduced collisions. That small moment of yellow that drivers sometimes rush through? That was Morgan’s contribution to modern traffic control.
Morgan once referred to himself as a “Black Edison,” according to his biographer — a bold claim for a man who had largely taught himself through hands-on experimentation rather than formal schooling. Of course, many say Morgan was not simply inventing devices. He was responding to the city. And he was shaping its narrative too. In 1916, the same year as the tunnel rescue, Morgan founded The Call, a Black newspaper that later became part of what is now the Call and Post. In an era when mainstream papers often ignored or distorted Black life, the publication offered civic voice and representation.
Morgan’s impact today
Today, Morgan’s presence is woven into Cleveland’s landscape. Though he moved around, his longtime home was on East 40th Street in the Central neighborhood. His businesses once operated along Superior and in other East Side corridors. Today a high school at 4600 Detroit Ave. bears his name. The Garrett A. Morgan Water Treatment Plant serves residents daily.
Did you know?
How Signal Cleveland got its name
Signal Cleveland is first a nod to Garrett Morgan, the noted Cleveland inventor. We heard from Greater Clevelanders that they were looking for a name that was bold, community-centered and rooted in Ohio. Signal Cleveland is all of those.
For those who want to see more than his name on a building, the Cleveland History Center, operated by the Western Reserve Historical Society, houses Morgan’s papers, photographs and artifacts, including materials related to his inventions and businesses.
Sandra Morgan, his granddaughter and now mayor of East Cleveland, has said she was only two years old when he died, but his presence in the family remained strong. “He cared deeply about his family, he cared deeply about his community, and he wanted to contribute in every way that he could,” she has said publicly, encouraging people to see him as more than a list of patents.
That fuller portrait is what Garrett Morgan Day seeks to honor, Ronayne said. Not just the inventor of a safety hood or the designer of an improved traffic signal but a self-taught mechanic who turned observation into innovation. A businessman who funded his own experiments. A Black Clevelander who refused to let limited education limit his imagination. Before Cleveland had comic-book heroes, it had Garrett Morgan.