Commentary: African American Scientists, Explorers and Inventors
By dopper0189, Black Kos Managing Editor
Garrett Augustus Morgan, Sr. (March 4, 1877 – July 27, 1963) was an African-American inventor, businessman, and community leader. His most notable inventions were the three position stop light (stop, go, caution traffic signal) and the gas mask (smoke hood). Morgan also discovered and developed a chemical hair-processing and straightening solution. He created a successful company based on his hair product inventions along with a complete line of hair-care products, and became involved in the civic and political advancement of African-Americans, especially in and around Cleveland, Ohio. Morgan sold the rights to his traffic light invention to General Electric for $40,000.
I first heard of Garrett Morgan, when I was in junior high school and I needed to do a research paper. A family friend who worked at GE asked me if I knew that the stop light was invented by a black man, and suggested I look it up. I ended up writing my paper on Garrett Morgan.
Morgan was born in 1877 at Claysville, Harrison County, Kentucky an almost exclusively African American community outside of Paris, Kentucky. His father was Sydney Morgan, a son and freed slave of Confederate Colonel John H. Morgan of Morgan's Raiders. His mother was a slave called Elizabeth Reed, daughter of Rev. Garrett Reed; she was part Native American.] He had at least one sibling, a brother named Frank, who assisted in the 1916 Lake Erie tunnel rescue. With a sixth-grade education, from Branch Elementary School in Claysville, Morgan moved at the age of 14 to Cincinnati, Ohio, in search of work.
First he worked as a handyman in Cincinnati; next he moved to Cleveland, where he worked as a sewing-machine repairman. In 1907, he opened his own repair shop, and in 1909 he added a garment shop to his operation. The business was an enormous success, and by 1920 Morgan had made enough money to start a newspaper, the Cleveland Call, which became one of the most important black newspapers in the nation.
In 1912, Morgan developed an invention called a Safety Hood and patented it as a Breathing Device, but the world came to know it as a Gas Mask. The Safety Hood consisted of a hood worn over the head of a person from which emanated a tube which reached near the ground and allowed in clean air. The bottom of the tube was lined with a sponge type material that would help to filter the incoming air. Another tube existed which allowed the user to exhale air out of the device.
Morgan intended the device to be used “to provide a portable attachment which will enable a fireman to enter a house filled with thick suffocating gases and smoke and to breathe freely for some time therein, and thereby enable him to perform his duties of saving life and valuables without danger to himself from suffocation. The device is also efficient and useful for protection to engineers, chemists and working men who are obliged to breathe noxious fumes or dust derived from the materials in which they are obliged to work.”
At the Second International Exposition of Safety and Sanitation, the device won first prize and Morgan was award a gold medal. While demonstrations were good for sales, the true test of the product would come only under real life circumstances.
On July 24, 1916 an explosion occurred in a tunnel being dug under Lake Erie by the Cleveland Water Works. The tunnel quickly filled with smoke, dust and poisonous gases and trapped 32 workers underground. The men were feared lost because no means of safely entering and rescuing them was known. Fortunately someone at the scene remembered Morgan’s invention and ran to his home where he was relaxing. Garrett and his brother Frank quickly arrived at the scene, donned Safety Hoods and entered the tunnel. After several heart wrenching minutes, Garrett appeared from the tunnel carrying a survivor on his back as did his brother seconds later. The crowd erupted in a staggering applause and Garrett and Frank reentered the tunnel, this time joined by two other men. While they were unable to save all of the workers, they were able to rescue many who would otherwise have certainly died. Reaction to Morgan’s device and his heroism quickly spread across the city and the country as newspapers picked up on the story. Morgan received a gold medal from a Cleveland citizens group as well as a medal from the International Association of Fire Engineers, which also made him an honorary member.
Soon, orders came in from fire and police departments across the country. Unfortunately, many of these orders were canceled when it was discovered that Morgan was Black. Racism being what it is, many people would rather face almost certain death than rely on a lifesaving device created by a Black man. Nevertheless, with the outbreak of World War I and the use of poisonous gases, Morgan’s Safety Hood, now known as the Gas Mask was utilized by the United States Army and saved the lives of thousands of soldiers
Morgan was now prosperous enough to have a car at a time when the streets were crowded with all manner of vehicles: Bicycles, horse-drawn delivery wagons, streetcars and pedestrians all shared downtown Cleveland’s narrow streets and clogged its intersections. There were manually operated traffic signals where major streets crossed one another, but they were not all that effective. The lights switched back and forth between Stop and Go with no interval in between, and drivers had no time to react when the command changed. This flaw led to many collisions between vehicles that both had the right of way when they entered the intersection.
As the story goes, when Morgan witnessed an especially spectacular accident at an ostensibly regulated corner, he had an idea: If he designed an automated signal with an interim “warning” position—the ancestor of today’s yellow light—drivers would have time to clear the intersection before crossing traffic entered it.
On November 20, 1923, the U.S. Patent Office granted Patent No. 1,475,074 to 46-year-old inventor and newspaperman Garrett Morgan for his three-position traffic signal. Though Morgan’s was not the first traffic signal (that one had been installed in London in 1868), it was an important innovation nonetheless: By having a third position besides just “Stop” and “Go,” it regulated crossing vehicles more safely than earlier signals had.
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News round up by dopper0189, Black Kos Managing Editor
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Two Georgia election workers falsely accused of rigging the 2020 election have settled a defamation lawsuit with the far-right conspiracy website The Gateway Pundit.
After the 2020 presidential election, Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss were accused of committing election fraud and counting illegal ballots in a series of stories published to the website. The pair then sued the website for defamation, and The Guardian reported that the final settlement was filed on Thursday in circuit court in Missouri.
Terms of the settlement were not disclosed, but Freeman and Moss successfully sued Trump’s former lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, for libel last year and won a judgment of $150 million.
The Gateway Pundit, along with Giuliani, repeatedly attacked Freeman and Moss even after the lies about them were debunked and the pair were found to have just been doing their jobs. The election-rigging conspiracy quickly spread among the right wing, with the likes of Sean Hannity and even Trump repeating them.
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Some years ago Christian Kofi Adu Vanlare wanted to buy a “really big birthday cake” for his uncle, the family patriarch, who was turning 88. But there was a problem. Mr Vanlare lives in New Jersey on America’s east coast. His uncle lives in Accra, Ghana’s capital. Icing and sponge do not travel well, and simple things like organising a cake can be onerous in a bustling African city. Various cousins said they were too busy to procure a gateau.
Eventually he had a slice of luck when a friend relented and went to the shops. The big uncle got his big cake. But making a meal out of buying a dessert was a reminder of the challenges of being abroad while having commitments back home. “For those of us who live in the diaspora this is our daily problem,” says Mr Vanlare.
So he came up with a solution. Somafour (“One who is sent” in Akan, a language spoken by most Ghanaians) is an app that connects Ghanaians in the diaspora with those in Ghana who can run errands on their behalf. Mr Vanlare’s startup is unlikely to attract the attention of venture capitalists in the near future. But its very existence reflects the growing number of Africans living overseas and their economic importance to the continent. It also offers a lesson in the role of trust in getting things done.
Africans account for a fraction of immigrants in most rich countries but their numbers are rising. More than 2m immigrants from sub-Saharan Africa lived in America as of 2019, a 16-fold increase since 1980, according to the Migration Policy Institute, a think tank. By one estimate in 2022, there were roughly 500,000 Ghanaians living in oecd countries.
That is a fraction of the 34m in Ghana itself, but their money matters. In 2023 the $4.6bn in remittances to Ghana was more than the country received in aid and fdi combined. In addition, hard currency goes a lot further these days. The Ghanaian cedi has lost about two-thirds of its value against the us dollar in the past five years. This has encouraged some in the diaspora to buy land while their dollars are worth more. One Somafour agent says he was asked to visit the land a customer had bought to check the quality of the plot. Dealing with bureaucrats at the land register office can also be part of the job.
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The plan was announced by President Luis Abinader's spokesman, Homero Figueroa, who blamed the international community's slow response to months of gang violence in neighbouring Haiti and its failure to restore stability.
Tens of thousands of Haitians have fled across the border into the Dominican Republic.
Critics say the government of President Abinader has treated Haitian migrants inhumanely, many of whom are fleeing the extreme gang violence and poverty in the capital Port-au-Prince.
Mr Figueroa said deportations would begin immediately and follow strict protocols that guaranteed respect for human rights.
The comments by the Dominican government’s spokesman suggest the rate of deportations of undocumented Haitians is about to ramp up significantly.
Since gang violence in Haiti has worsened in recent months, the Dominican authorities have steadily been returning Haitians over their shared land border including several truckloads of people per day at the border crossing at Dajabon.
Now, said Mr Figueroa, that figure could reach as many as 10,000 people a week.
TOPSHOT - Aerial view of Haitian nationals waiting to cross the northern border bridge over the Massacre River from Ouanaminthe (top), Haiti, to Dajabon (bottom), Dominican Republic, on March 5, 2021.
. (Photo by Erika SANTELICES / AFP) (Photo by ERIKA SANTELICES/afp/AFP via Getty Images)
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This isn't what was supposed to happen in JD Vance's home state Cleveland.com : Survey: 84% Of Ohio Voters Favor Teaching America’s History Of Racism And Its Impact
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