Rose Meta Morgan was born in Edwar, Mississippi in 1912. But she spent her childhood in Chicago, It is known that by 1942, she owned the largest African- American beauty parlor in the world. Her mother was Winnie Morgan, a homemaker. Her dad was Chapple Morgan who first rented land on a cotton plantation in Mississippi and later worked in the hotel business after moving to Chicago. She was a part of a big family with nine children.
Morgan's business skills had always been inspired by her dad, she claimed. She used to cut flowers as a girl from the crepe paper and sell them with her companions, door to door. She used to sell a bunch for five cents and gave her friends a penny for each bunch. Thus she already engaged in business activities at the age of 10. When she was just 12, she began hair styling for friends and neighbors. She claimed to have a great imagination and tremendous skillful hands. At 16, despite her dad's cautions, she made enough money to quit high school confidently.
Her dad insisted that she would obtain a job. So she began shaking sheets in a laundromat. She had a hard time raising her sore arms after her first night and realized it wasn't suitable for her. She returned to doing hair full-time. Customers would come and get their hair done before work even as early as 5:30 and 6 in the morning. Later, she proceeded to attend the cosmetology school to earn her license after her client base was growing.
She then rented a booth in a local salon and began working full-time after attending Morris School of Beauty. In 1938 she designed and so impressed the singer-songwriter Ethel Waters' hair that she was asked as Waters' guest to New York. Due to the glamor of the city, Morgan relocated there and had built enough consumers within six months to operate her own beauty store. She recruited five designers and signed a ten-year lease in an empty, decaying house.
By 1946, there were 29 employees at the Rose Meta House of Beauty, 20 of them hair stylists, three qualified masseurs, and one registered nurse.
She arrived in New York with 500 dollars and rented a booth in a saloon with a rent of 10 bucks. The living room was on Sugar Hill, a fabulous enclave of rich and well-known black people, and the words traveled over the technique of Morgan fast. She was known to use fewer hair products to make hair feel softer and more bouncing, which might be rugged in the wrong hands.
After meeting Olivia Clarke, a biology graduate from Virginia State College and New York University, Morgan has grown her business again. Clarke offered to combine her scientific skin care knowledge with Morgan's proficiency in hair care, and the two reached an agreement. Morgan sold her a third of the business and began to look for a place for a larger full-service lounge. They uncovered it when they met an estate at Sugar Hill which had been unoccupied and reputed to be haunted for almost 20 years.
Morgan opened the salon on 6 May 1945, with a lavish ceremony in which the newly elected Rev Adam Clayton Powell Jr. cut off the ribbon. The "Haunted House," which covers 5 levels, was turned into the Rose Meta House of Beauty, where over 30 people worked as hairstylists, massage therapists,, and specialists in skin care. By 1955, the living room had been refurbished with the addition of a dressing room, a diet and body room and a charming classroom. In a world that has been more used to being loved by the blacks than being soothed by them, Rose Meta (pronounced MEE-tah) was an oasis that indicated elegance and calmness to the black women.
Experience with not being able to take out loans because of racial differences, it encouraged her to get involved in banking as well. Finally, in 1964 Morgan helped Freedom National Bank.
Later on, styling ultimately changed, and her skill had run out of demand. In the end, she years later returned to Chicago and died on 16th December 2008 at the age of 96.
“No matter how experienced you were. I don't care where you have... coming from, or what school you went to, or how much practice you had before coming there. But you have to learn my method.” - Rose
Writer: Zahin Tasnin
Sources: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/10/obituaries/rose-morgan-overlooked.html
https://www.thehistorymakers.org/biography/rose-morgan-39
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