Coney Island has always had a reputation as a place where people could make their dreams come true, where people outside the mainstream could prove themselves. For Granville T. Woods (1856-1910), it became the place where he demonstrated two of his famous inventions: an electric railway and an electric roller coaster called the Figure Eight. In celebration of Black History Month, listen to David Head tell the story of Black inventor Granville T. Woods (1856-1910) in our oral history archive. Head, the former chairman of TWU Local 100's Black History Committee, wrote a book about Woods and championed a Coney Island street naming in 2008. Granville T. Woods Way is at the corner of Stillwell and Mermaid Avenues. In the same year, the Coney Island History Project inducted Woods into the Coney Island Hall of Fame.
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