Both today and throughout history, Black security practitioners contribute greatly to the advancement, improvement, and innovation of the security industry. In honor of Black History Month, ASIS International is excited to highlight just a few of the Black security innovators who have shaped this industry.
Garrett Morgan
Garrett Morgan was born in 1877 to two freed slaves in Paris, Kentucky. Morgan attended school only through sixth grade, when he left school to begin work. While still a teenager, Morgan moved to Cincinatti, Ohio, where he worked as a handyman for a wealthy landowner. Eager to continue learning, Morgan used some of his wages to hire a private tutor.
In 1895, Morgan relocated to Cleveland, Ohio, where he found work in the clothing industry as a sewing machine repairman. This work sparked his interest in machinery and how things worked. He soon invented a belt fastener and zigzag attachment for sewing machines.
However, Morgan’s aptitude for invention did not end with the sewing machine; in the following years he invented a hair straightener and a breathing device that was a precursor to WWI-era gas masks.
Shortly before the turn of the 20th century, automobiles hit the American market and soon became popular, although they still shared the road with horse-drawn carts, bicycles, and pedestrians. The existing traffic signals were not effective enough at managing traffic, often resulting in sometimes deadly collisions. In 1922, Morgan himself witnessed an accident between a horse-drawn carriage and an automobile, inspiring him to find a solution that would prevent the likelihood of future accidents.
Morgan invented a traffic signal that featured three positions: go, stop, and an all-directional stop. The all-directional stop paused traffic in all directions, allowing pedestrians to cross more safely. Additionally, during times of low traffic, the signal could be positioned at half-mast, advising approaching drivers to proceed with caution. Morgan received a U.S. patent for his traffic signal, and later had his invention patented in both Canada and the United Kingdom as well.
Morgan’s constant appetite for improvement and his desire to make the world safer and more efficient serve as a model for the security practitioners of today and tomorrow.
William D. Coffee
In April 1946, the United States Army awarded William D. Coffee the Commendation for Meritorious Civilian service for his wartime leadership in exploiting critical enciphered messages.
Coffee was born in Abingdon, Virginia, and studied English at Knoxville College in Tennessee. During the Great Depression, Coffee worked in the Civilian Conservation Corps, before beginning a position as a waiter at Arlington Hall School for Girls. Soon after, the U.S. Army’s cryptologic organization bought the property, and Coffee was hired as a janitor. He was quickly promoted to messenger and then head messenger.
In early 1944, the chief of the Signal Security Agency (SSA) and the head of the cryptanalytic branch of the SSA were directed to create a unit of black cryptologists. The SSA was required to ensure that at least 12-15% of their staff was Black but struggled to recruit people for the unit. Coffee was asked to assist in recruitment and very quickly found dozens of candidates. Due to his work, about 100 Black cryptologists were brought on staff.
As such, Coffee was again promoted to cryptographic clerk. Coffee proved his adeptness in his new role and was promoted to a supervisory position, Assistant Civilian in Charge of B-3-b. B-3-b was a unit tasked with the exploitation of nongovernmental commercial coded messages originating from several foreign countries. B-3-b continued to expand its mission under Coffee’s leadership, including exploiting diplomatic codes of several countries and managing 30 people who worked in code identification and decoding, researching, and analyzing unknown codes, and translating.
After World War II ended, Coffee continued working with the military, being transferred to the Intercept Control Branch where he worked in transcription during the Cold War. He joined the Armed Forces Security Agency, NSA's predecessor, and made the transition to NSA. Coffee retired from the NSA in 1972.
In addition to his important cryptology work, Coffee helped to break racial barriers in both the American military and American society at large. His efforts demonstrate how reaching across divides can help advance the mission of security both in the past and into the future.
Marie Van Brittan Brown
Marie Van Brittan Brown was born in Queens, New York, and spent her whole life there. She started her career as a nurse and was married to Albert L. Brown, an electronics technician. Both Brown and her husband worked long hours and irregular shifts, keeping them away from home. The neighborhood the Browns lived in had a high crime rate and poor police response time, so Brown wanted to find a way to more easily screen visitors with lower risk.
In 1966, Marie and her husband filed a patent citing her as the lead inventor for a home security camera system. The ingenious design included three lensed peepholes in the door at different heights, a vertically mobile camera, monitors, and a two-way microphone. The camera was affixed to the inside of the door and could move between the three peepholes to be at face-height for a child, an average-sized person, or a tall person. The camera would then relay the images to a monitor via radio waves, so the resident could see who was at the door remotely from further inside the home. The resident could also use the microphone to speak with someone at the door remotely. The system also included a control panel that would allow the door to be unlocked or locked remotely, and an alarm push button that would immediately alert the police.
Brown’s home security system laid the groundwork for many of the home security systems still used today, and her patent is referenced in at least 38 other patent applications. Brown’s example shows that difficult circumstances call for creative solutions to maintaining and improving security.
