Rose Meta Morgan began a beauty empire in Harlem, New
York, during the 1940s and quickly became a powerhouse in the field and a
doyenne of African American high society. Ebony magazine called her House of Beauty the Number One establishment of its kind in the
world, and women flocked from across the country to patronize this fabulous
salon. The poet Langston
Hughes once said that Morgan was
on a stairway to the stars.
Born
around 1912 in Shelby, Mississippi,
Rose Morgan always felt homely. But her father, Chaptle Morgan, was a great
influence on young Rose, and he doted on her. She told Essence’s Mike Moore, “He used
to praise everything I did. And I’d work as hard as I could to please him. I believed I could do
anything because he told me I could.”
An extremely successful sharecropper, Mr. Morgan moved his family of 13 to Chicago when Rose was six years old. Her
father’s prowess as a businessman fascinated
her. She watched him keep his accounts for much of his life, knowing that one
day she would have her own business. Her first foray in this area came with her father’s help when Morgan was ten;
she made artificial flowers and convinced neighborhood children to sell them
door to door.
Morgan
also worked in a laundry, shaking out sheets until her arms ached. She would
get up at 5:30 in order to be at work by 7:00. Early one morning, when her
father woke her for work, Morgan complained that her arms hurt too much and
that she needed more sleep. “You’ve made yourself a hard bed,”
her father said, as she recalled to Moore.
“Now lie in it.” Morgan went on to
declare, “I was determined from that point it would not be a hard bed all
my life.”
DEVELOPED STYLING GIFT AS A TEEN:
By 11 Morgan began to show an affinity for hairstyling and
by 14 was earning money this way. Although some sources suggest she finished high school,
Morgan seemed proud of her lack of a diploma when she extolled the merits of
the beauty field to Ebony, saying, “I know [it’s an important field] for
I was a high school drop-out, and [the beauty industry] gave me an opportunity
to prove that I could go as far as those who had been to college. “
Her
high school education notwithstanding, Morgan did attend Chicago’s Morris School of
Beauty, where
her innate ability in styling, cutting, and grooming hair enhanced her
progress. After school she rented a booth in a neighborhood salon and began
taking on customers full-time. In 1938 a friend in the theater business
introduced Morgan to singer/actress Ethel Waters. Morgan styled Waters’ hair prior to a performance, and Waters was so impressed that she invited Morgan to accompany her
back to New York City. When Waters’ Chicago engagement ended, Morgan took her first vacation
ever, traveling back with Waters in her car. “I saw tall buildings for
the first time,” she told Essence. “I went on a boat ride and saw the most glamorous women, all
dressed up. I wanted to stay.”
Morgan
would not stay, however, without her family’s
approval. When she returned to Chicago her father once again proved himself her
biggest backer; he gave her his blessing and told her to go out and make
something of herself. Accepting a job in New York, Morgan almost immediately
became a very popular beautician. In just six months’ time she had developed a large enough clientele to
establish her own beauty shop. In the converted kitchen of a friend’s apartment, Morgan’s
first business began to grow so rapidly that she was soon forced to hire and
train five stylists to work under her. By then she also needed a bigger space.
With her friend, Olivia
Clark, she signed a ten-year lease on a rundown mansion that had
been vacant for years— it was even referred to as the haunted
house.
“All the men I knew thought I was out of my mind— doomed to failure,” she told Moore. “They said I didn’t know anything about
renovation. But I’m in a business where a woman has to take care of herself. I’ve never been afraid to
take the next step, to take on responsibilities.” The renovation of the house cost $28,000 and the latest in
hairdressing and health equipment was valued at $20,000. But within three years the Rose Meta House of
Beauty was the biggest African American beauty parlor in the world, well in the
black and earning handsome profits. Each co-owner was a specialist in a
different but related field, Morgan in hairdressing, Clarke in scientific body
treatments.
REJECTED RACIST CONCEPTIONS OF BEAUTY:
Hairdressing
had long been an important industry in the African American community. In order
to dull the devastating effects of racism, blacks often yearned to look more
like whites, with their more “accepted” conceit of what true beauty was. An
early issue of Ebony
reported, “Thousands of Negro men and women spend sizable sums annually on
their hair, purchase enormous quantities of hair greases and pomades, and
invest heavily in special dressing and curling treatments calculated to ’straighten’ kinky hair. To some,
de-kinking is synonymous with de-Negrofying and hence improvement.”
Rose Morgan was one of the first people to begin
quashing such racist notions. She spent her career pointing out the beauty
inherent in everyone, insisting that there was no such thing as bad hair and
that African American hair was equally beautiful to any other. “Miss
Morgan contends,” Ebony continued, “this
belief [that African American hair is inferior] is a reflection of the extent
to which white America has warped the values of certain Negroes who feel that
the more Negroid a Negro the less attractive.” Hair textures vary from race to race and type to type’ she says, “and it is very wrong to classify one kind as “better” than another. It’s all in the way you care
for the hair. All hair is bad if it isn’t well-styled and groomed.’”
The House of Beauty’s policy was to send the
customer back into the world looking her best. This sometimes led to disagreements. “We don’t always agree with what
customers want and when we don’t we say so frankly,”
Morgan told Ebony. “Thus,
there are many women who want styles our experience and judgment tell us are
unbecoming to them. In such cases we make suggestions on what we think is the
suitable hairstyle for the person concerned.”
Sometimes Morgan
actually refused to style a prospective customer’s hair because she felt the
look requested would be unattractive; she would rather do nothing at all than
let a woman out on the street with an unflattering hairstyle.
This first incarnation of the House of Beauty drew
an average of 1,000 customers a week. The staff of 29 included a registered
nurse, 20 hairstylists, and three licensed masseurs, drawing a payroll of
$40,000 in 1946. Morgan began selling her own line of cosmetics, in which she
exhibited a progressive flair for marketing. By identifying her market,
tailoring her cosmetics to it, and pricing them carefully, the cosmetics line
sold extremely well. In time Morgan began staging fashion shows for which her
employees and customers acted as designers and models.
Thousands
of people turned out for these huge social events at the Renaissance Casino and the Rockland Plaza in Harlem. Models wearing
exquisite dresses and luxurious furs were escorted by dashing men in tuxedos—all choreographed to the jazzy beat of swing. Great balls
followed the shows. “The people had seen nothing like it,” Morgan told Essence.
“All the girls loved the shows because there was nowhere else
they could show themselves off like high-fashion models.” Customers
came from coast to coast to the House of
Beauty. Morgan sailed on the Queen Mary to
Europe to spread her slogan: “To glorify the woman of
color.” When she went to Paris to demonstrate her technique, Paris
Match referred to her as one of the richest
businesswomen in New York.
By
the mid-1950s Morgan had begun to look for a sleeker, more chic salon. She
planned to invest $250,000 in refurbishing the new building she had purchased.
For years she had been doing business with a certain bank, and during almost two decades she had deposited
three million dollars there. She needed a $40,000 loan for her new
venture, but asked the bank for only a modest $25,000. They said no. Ever
resourceful, she tried another banker, one to whom she had given Harlem real estate advice in the past;
he came through with the loan. Friends and family covered the rest. Ten
thousand people came to the opening of Rose Morgan’s House of Beauty on a rainy day in February of 1955. The mayor’s wife cut a big pink ribbon inaugurating the new shop.
ANTICIPATED TRENDS:
One
young woman quoted by Ebony attested of the salon, “This
place is the end. Under one roof it has everything a woman needs to get
re-styled, upholstered and reconditioned!”
The new building
included, in addition to the customary salon amenities, a dressmaking
department, a reducing and body department, and a charm school. Cologne was infused regularly throughout the
building to keep the House of Beauty smelling sweet. And
in the late 1950s and early 1960s, when wearing wigs went from a fad to an entrenched
trend, Morgan opened a deluxe wig salon, initiating a wig pickup and delivery
service so women could have their coiffures styled off the premises. Once
again, Morgan had anticipated a major change in the industry and embraced it,
greatly furthering her success. One area in which Morgan did not
excel, however, was marriage.
Her
husbands could not seem to compete with her career. Morgan’s first marriage, which lasted only one year, occurred while
she was still living in Chicago. But
her second marriage would be by far her most famous match. On Christmas Day,
1955, Morgan married the heavyweight champion of the world, boxer Joe Louis, who had held the title for twelve years. Although
he had earned five million dollars during his professional career, when he
retired in 1949 Louis owed one million dollars in back taxes. He was a proud
man who enjoyed the good life, but to maintain this style of living he took
whatever work came his way. He tried hard to woo Morgan, whom he had met during
several high society functions, though he had not met a woman who wouldn’t jump when he said jump. The independent Morgan did finally
fall for Louis, later accepting his
spontaneous proposal of marriage. The small wedding was nonetheless a huge
media event.
Morgan
was ever enterprising in her attempts to help Louis earn a living in pursuits that she considered more “dignified” than wrestling and other demonstrations. She got them on a
quiz show, and during their run they won more than $60,000. She also tried a
joint business venture with Louis,
but this time her acumen was far too ahead of its time. The men’s cologne—called My Man— that she developed, selling it with posters of Louis, was not a hit. Men, especially black men of the late 1950s,
were not ready to wear cologne.
By
then the marriage was in trouble, too. Each partner concluded that their
lifestyles did not mesh. For one, he was a chronic night owl; she had to rise
early to be at work. Neither was satisfied, but each had great respect for the
other. In 1957 they separated; the marriage was annulled the following year.
Morgan later married lawyer Louis Saunders. Together they founded a New Jersey savings and
loan association. After two years the couple separated, though they
never filed for divorce. Saunders later died.
In 1965 Morgan founded the Freedom National Bank,
New York’s only black commercial bank, in which she became a major
shareholder.
In 1972 she began franchising a new business,
Trim-Away Figure Contouring.
And
then, after roughly 60 years in the beauty game, Morgan retired. Morgan’s salon was among the first
of its kind, providing full service for black women, including hair care,
manicures, eyebrow shaping, massage, and cosmetics. She had employed and trained more than 3,000 people. In her eighties Morgan’s skin was still flawless and
she continued to exercise seven days a week. Reflecting on her life, she told Essence, “I have
been happiest in knowing that I made women more beautiful, that people have
leaned on my shoulder, that I have taught hundreds of hands to do what these
two do.” She concluded to another Essence
reporter, “I don’t need anyone to take care of me. I’ve made that possible
myself.”
Sources
Books
Contributions of Black Women to America, vol. 1,Kenday Press, 1982.
Ebony Success Library, vol.
1, Johnson Publishing, p.228.
Notable Black American Woman, Gale,
1992, p.769.
Periodicals
Black Enterprise, March
1971, p. 14.
Ebony, May 1946, pp. 25-29;
March 1954, p. 26; June 1955, pp. 62-68; March 1956, pp. 45-49; November 1956,
p. 112; August 1966, pp. 140-42; December 1966, p. 23.
Essence, January 1974, p. 20;
June 1981, pp. 34-44;January 1995, p. 82.
Family Circle, November 1971, p. 35.
Pageant Press, 1962, p. 191.
—Joanna
Rubiner
COPYRIGHT 2005 Thomson Gale
"Morgan, Rose Meta 1912(?)—." Contemporary Black Biography. . Encyclopedia.com. 5 Oct. 2016 <http://www.encyclopedia.com>.
Much Love, Dr.Shermaine #KnowYourHistory #ShareYourHistory #CelebrateYourHistory
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"It's Not Selfish to Love Yourself, Take Care of Yourself and to Make Your Happiness a Priority. It's a Necessity." (Mandy Hale)
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