Transcript
Hans Charles (0:00)
This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human 1969. Malcolm and Martin are gone. America is in crisis. And at Morehouse College, the students make their move.
Menelik Lumumba (0:12)
These students, including a young Samuel L. Jackson, locked up. The members of the board of trustees, including Martin Luther King Sr. It's the true story of protest and rebellion in black American history that you'll never forget. I'm Hans Charles.
B.WSSU Mr. Alumni2025 (0:26)
Our menelik Lumumba.
Menelik Lumumba (0:28)
Listen to the a building on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
B.WSSU Mr. Alumni2025 (0:35)
Traffic lights started with a disaster. Welcome back know it alls to another episode of the most anticipated podcast on the Black Effect podcast network, especially in February, entitled I didn't know. Maybe you didn't either. I'm your host, B.WSSU Mr. Alumni2025. And we'll kick off this episode with three of the most useless facts you'll never need, not a day in life. Your first useless fact. The man who invented the modern traffic lights once had to hire a white actor to pretend to be him. But nobody would buy from a black inventor. Your second useless fact. That same man walked into a tunnel filled with poisonous gas 120ft under lake Erie just to rescue dying workers while the city of Cleveland watched. And your third useless fact. Four white men received Carnegie hero medals for the aforementioned rescue. But he was denied. Do you know why? Cause I didn't know.
Podcast Chorus/Group (1:41)
Maybe you didn't know. Maybe you didn't know. Maybe you didn't know. I didn't know. I didn't know. I didn't know.
B.WSSU Mr. Alumni2025 (1:52)
All right, first, let's talk about traffic lights. Cause when we think of them, we think them as boring, neutral. Always been their infrastructure. But traffic lights didn't start with order. They started with chaos. And the man who fixed it, bruh, had to pretend he didn't even exist just to sell his own invention. Let me tell you about Garrett Morgan. In 1914, Garrett Morgan invented something called the safety hood. Now, that was a breathing device that let you survive in smoke and toxic gas. The very first breathing mask. Pretty much. Problem was nobody would buy from him. Cause he were black. So Garrett did something wild. He hired a white man to act like he was the inventor. And then Morgan disguised himself, some accounts say as big Chief Mason from a Canadian Indian tribe. He filled a tent with noxious smoke, strapped on his device and walked inside. He stayed in there for nearly 30 minutes. When he walked out alive, the crowd was stunned. Sales took off. And then came July 24, 1916. The Cleveland Waterworks Tunnel disaster. Dun dun dun. Construction workers was digging a tunnel 120ft under Lake Erie, four miles from the shore. And just before midnight, they hit a pocket of natural gas. That explosion killed 11 men instantly. They sent two rescue parties down. Ten of the 18 rescuers died from the gas. Nobody else would go down. At 4am The Cleveland Police called Garrett Morgan. And they said, bring your hoods. All of them. I know Garrett Morgan probably thought, don't y' all white men in Cleveland got your own hoods? But that's a whole nother conversation. Cause Morgan grabbed his Brother Frank, loaded 20 safety hoods in the car and drove to the scene immediately. Then he did what nobody else would do. He strapped on his own invention and walked into the gas field tunnel. Him and his brother pulled out survivors. They recovered bodies. Garrett Morgan saved more people than any other rescuer that night. Now let me tell you where it gets ugly. Cause four white men received Carnegie hero medals. Garrett Morgan was denied. Why? Because the Carnegie Hero Fund said that Morgan had the aid of his safety hood. Meaning he wasn't at the same extraordinary risk as the others. His own invention was used against him. But wait, it gets worse. Once the word spread that the safety hood's inventor was black, themselves dried up like salt on a slug. But Gary Morgan didn't stop. In 1923, he saw one of the worst car accidents ever. And he patented something else. A3 position traffic signal. See, before Gary Morgan, traffic signals only had two positions. Stop and go. But Morgan added the third. The all stop. That pause where nobody moves, that yellow light. At Garrett Morgan, that moment became the foundation of modern traffic safety. And he sold that patent to General Electric for $40,000. But here's the plot twist. It took until 1991 to 28 years after Gary Morgan had died, for Cleveland to name a water treatment plant after him. It took until 2016, 100 years after the disaster, for the descendants of Morgan and the tunnel victims to meet for the first time. His daughter Sandra held back tears at the ceremony. Traffic lights didn't start with convenience. They started with a man who walked into death to save strangers, then got erased for doing it. And I didn't know. Maybe you didn't either.