Mary Ellen Pleasant (memorialized in San Francisco as "The Mother of Civil
Rights in California," dictated three sets of memoirs, the last two were recently
uncovered by Susheel Bibbs, a San Francsco-based researcher/writer who
lectures at UC, Berkeley. Charlotte Downs, daughter of one of Pleasant's
Civil-Rights cohorts acted as her scribe for what proves the verifiable
account. Bibbs' research examined these accounts, Pleasant's letters, and
rare interviews and documents, which she found -- many for the first time.
Here is a list of Pleasant's achievements, based on that research, followed
by the article of the month, which highlights Pleasant's later life and
dispells many myths about her.
TIMELINE
- Born a slave in Georgia between 1814-17, the daughter of an enslaved
Vodou priestess from Saint Domingue (Haiti) and the son (John H.
Pleasants) of a Virginia Governor, James Pleasants.
- Bought out of slavery by a planter who might have felt himself indebted
to her.
- Indentured for nine years as a store clerk with a Quaker storekeeper,
Mrs. Hussey, in Massachusetts. They (the Hussey/Gardner clan)were
abolitionists who grew to love Mary.
- Apprenticed as a tailor's assistant in Boston ca. 1840.
- Married, ca. 1841, to James W. Smith, a wealthy mulatto merchant from
Ohio and Philadelphia. James was a slave rescuer on the Underground
Railroad, who passed as a Cuban. He taught Mary this skill, but died in
1844, leaving her a $45,000 fortune and a plantation run by freedmen,
near Harper's Ferry, VI
- Served as an Underground (UG) Railroad (RxR) slave rescuer and
- Ca. 1850, married her first husband's friend and plantation foreman,
John James (JJ) Pleasance (Pleasants anglicized). He was not related to
her father.
- Fled to California via New Orleans in 1851, arriving in San Francisco
in April 1852. Because she had no freedom papers, she passed as a white
boarding house super and chef while she invested and grew her money in
diverse businesses, money lending, and real estate.
- Became known as the Western terminus of the UG RxR and The Black City
Hall because she used the leveraging skills she had learned in New
Orleans from the great Vodou queen, Marie LaVeau, to pressure the
powerful into helping the powerless -- African Americans and poor women
-- gain rights and get jobs
- Opened the first jobs for blacks in this way in hotels, homes, and on
steamers in CA. Later she
- By 1870, had secured jobs for blacks on the railroads and in hotels and
backed many in business. She called herself "A Capitalist by Trade,"
but she was never a Madam, as claimed by her enemies.
- In 1858 took on national significance when she returned to the East,
bought slave refuge land, and aided abolitionist John Brown by riding
in disguise, in advance of his raid at Harper's Ferry to encourage
slaves to join him.
- Fought secretly for and later led the Franchise League movement in San
Francisco -- at first for the right to testify in court, and later for
the right to ride the trolleys.
- In 1868, fought and won a precedent-setting SF trolley case (Pleasants
vs. North Beach and Mission RxR), which was used by California
Civil-Rights attorney David Oppenheimer in 1982 to achieve modern-day
civil rights. In that case she lost the right to the money for pain and
suffering from discrimination, which the 20th-century case won.
- She eventually raised a $30,000,000 fortune as the secret partner of
Scottish banker/merchant Thomas Bell, whom she also loved.
- Two years after her second husband died, she moved into a mansion (the
site of her SF mermorial) with Bell, shielding him from public
criticism by representing another (white) woman (Teresa) as his wife.
The complex ploy gave her personal life a soap-opera quality, but did
not stop her later philantrophy and advocacy for human rights.
- Pleasant died in 1904 after years of illness and finantial difficulty,
but her legacy lives on.
She could love across boundaries of race and class without losing sight of her goal.
For that we honor her.
Why not visit the Main Pleasant site?
Click here
