Rose Meta Morgan (August 9, 1912 – December 16, 2008) was the owner and operator of the largest beauty parlor for African American women. She was also among the founders of New York's only black-owned commercial bank, the Freedom National Bank.

Early life

Morgan was one of nine children, the daughter of Chaptle Morgan, a former sharecropper turned businessman, and Winnie Robinson, a homemaker. She was born in Mississippi and was raised in Chicago.

Career

She attended the Morris School of Beauty. After she styled

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’s hair in 1938, the performer invited her to New York City. She rented a booth in Sugar Hill salons and six month’s later opened her salon, Rose Meta’s House of Beauty, in an old mansion. By 1946, the salon had 29 employees including stylists, masseurs, and nurses. In 1955, the facility relocated and reopened under a new name, Rose Morgan’s House of Beauty, with additional departments including dressmaking and charm school spread over five floors. A wig salon was added in 1960. A 1946 Ebony magazine article named it the “biggest negro beauty parlor in the world.” Throughout the 1960s until her retirement in the 1970s, Morgan wrote a column for the ''New Pittsburgh Courier''. Over her career, Morgan trained 3,000 hairdressers in her beauty institutions. She founded

Freedom National Bank Freedom National Bank was an African-American owned bank in Harlem ( New York City) founded in 1964 and shut down in 1990. Freedom National served Harlem's Black community and was one of the largest Black owned banks in the U.S. Its main office wa ...

, the only commercial bank for African Americans in New York.

Personal life

She married heavyweight boxer

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in 1955. The marriage was annulled two years later.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Morgan, Rose 1912 births 2008 deaths African-American company founders Beauticians American women company founders American company founders Businesspeople from Mississippi Businesspeople from Chicago 20th-century American businesspeople 20th-century American businesswomen 20th-century African-American women 20th-century African-American people 21st-century African-American people 21st-century African-American women