In development · A feature film
Standing in Fire
The series is the history. This is the story at the end of it — a feature about Garrett Morgan, the hood he invented, and the night in 1916 he used it himself.
was patented
explosion, July 25
where we're shooting
He built it before anyone wanted it
Morgan's safety hood was designed on a simple observation: in a smoke-filled room, the cleanest air is near the floor. A hood over the head, a tube running down to it, and a person could stay inside long enough to get someone out.
It won awards. It did not sell. Fire departments were not lining up to buy equipment from a Black inventor, and Morgan reportedly hired a white actor to present the device at demonstrations while he posed as an assistant.
The tunnel under the lake
Cleveland drew its drinking water through tunnels bored out beneath Lake Erie. On July 25, 1916, an explosion tore through one of them with a work crew still inside, five miles out and fifty feet under.
Rescue parties went down and did not come back. Someone remembered the man across town with the hood. Morgan and his brother put them on and went into the tunnel themselves.
And then the story went quiet
Morgan was passed over for the recognition given to others who were there. Orders for the hood came in from around the country — and were canceled when buyers learned who had made it.
This is the part of the story that makes it a film rather than a fact. Not the invention. What happened to the credit.
Made with the Western Reserve Historical Society and the Greater Cleveland Film Commission. Produced by Lightmile Media through a fiscal sponsor.
The proof of concept
The Inventor
We made the short first, to find out whether the story played the way we thought it would. It did.
Watch it, then get on the list — the feature is where this is going, and everything we learn along the way goes out to that list first.