Christiana Carteaux Bannister

Christiana Carteaux Bannister (; 1819–1902) was an American business entrepreneur, hairdresser, and abolitionist in New England. She was known professionally as Madame Carteaux. Christiana was married to successful artist Edward Mitchell Bannister, who she supported financially during the early stages of his career. While Christiana's legacy has been overlooked in the past, coverage of her work in popular sources during the late 2010s has brought new attention to her success and political efforts.

Biography Christiana Carteaux Bannister was born in 1819 in North Kingstown, Rhode Island. She was born to African American and Narragansett Indian parents. She was a descendant of enslaved Africans who worked the plantations of South County, Rhode Island, during the eighteenth century. As a young woman, she moved to Boston where she worked as a wigmaker and hairdresser. She was a successful business entrepreneur, and self-styled "hair doctress," generating income by hairdressing and selling her own hair products. From 1847 to 1871 Christiana Carteaux Bannister maintained several salons in Boston including on Cambridge, Washington, and Winter Streets.

In Providence, she founded the Home for Aged Colored Women when she learned about the struggles of African American women who worked as domestics but were too old to work and often became homeless.

Death and legacy

Despite her success throughout her professional life, Bannister died with little money in January 1903. Though she was admitted into the Home for Aged Colored Women in September 1902, Bannister reportedly lived with mental illness and was transferred to the Howard Asylum, Lancaster reported. Upon her death, she was laid to rest next to her husband, who died in January 1901 during a church prayer meeting, without a grave marker.

Many years after her death, she began to receive more public recognition for her contributions to society and Black history. Bannister was inducted into the Rhode Island Heritage Hall of Fame in 2003, and a bronze bust of her, based upon a portrait Edward painted, was placed in the Rhode Island State House in December 2002.