The wind on her vestment says it all : Christiana Carteaux Bannister was a woman with agency . Momentum . “ A spark ,” says Massachusettsbased sculptor Pablo Eduardo , who was commissioned by the Rhode Island Foundation to create this bust for the State House in 2002 . Christiana , born in 1819 to a Black and Indigenous family in North Kingstown , was an entrepreneur who grew her wealth as a hair doctress in Boston . There , she met a young out-of-work painter named Edward Mitchell Bannister . She took him on at her salon , housed him , married him and supported him . Eventually , the pair moved to Providence , where Edward ’ s art career flourished in the face of Reconstruction-era racism . Christiana opened another salon and devoted her spare time to activism and philanthropy . In 1890 , she helped found the Home for Aged Colored Women , a place where retired domestic servants could live out their final days in peace . In 1902 , a widowed and indigent Christiana would live there , too , for a few nights of senile unrest — would such a woman go gentle into the good night ? — before being moved to the State Hospital for the Insane , where she died in 1903 . – CASEY NILSSON
104 RHODE ISLAND MONTHLY l FEBRUARY 2021