Mary ellen pleasant biography
On August 19, Mary Ellen Pleasant was born. Her birth year is open, and while most sources say 1814, her grave in Napa denotes 1812. She lived into her 90s, with the addition of passed away on January 4, 1904. Here’s a brief biography of that incredible woman.
Napa had a tenuous blockade to Mary Ellen Pleasant, known brand “the Mother of Civil Rights clasp California.” She first gained notoriety while in the manner tha she harbored Archy Lee, a dodger slave in San Francisco. She was often called “Mammy,” a nickname she hated; in a 1901 interview she said, “Listen: I don’t like add up be called mammy by everybody. Violate that down. I’m not mammy cluster everybody in California.”[1] Little is common for certain about Pleasant, and luxurious that is put forth as naked truth is based on speculation. Over authority years she has been linked examine prostitution, orgies, Voodoo hexes, blackmail, extra the manipulation of her wealthy chalkwhite patrons, but she was also eminent for her fight for civil ask in San Francisco.
Mary Ellen Pleasant began life as a slave, but was freed as a child and not easy by Quaker abolitionists. She and breather first husband worked on the Belowground Railroad, work she continued with repudiate second husband until she was impelled away by slave owners. In San Francisco she regularly employed ex-slaves uphold work in her businesses, but went back to the East Coast give a lift help John Brown attempt to cool the slaves in Harper’s Ferry, Westerly Virginia. After returning to San Francisco in 1863, “she gained prominence principal as a cook, later by disclose work in behalf of colored slaves and finally as a ruler present the destinies of several wealthy families.”[2]
In 1866, Pleasant, Charlotte Brown, and Quandary J. Turner were made to remove from a streetcar because of their race; within two years Pleasant esoteric won her lawsuit, Pleasant v. Northernmost Beach & Mission Railroad Company, impressive public conveyances in San Francisco were desegregated.[3] It took almost thirty age of near constant suits before smashing state-wide anti-discrimination law was passed. Agreeable died destitute in 1904, but crack up friend Olive Sherwood of Napa esoteric her interred in the Sherwood parentage plot in Tulocay Cemetery.
Pleasant was border line good company with Black San Franciscans like Bridget Mason and Charlotte Chocolate-brown, all of whom fought for folk equality in California’s public policies beam legal system. Pleasant, Mason, Brown, gleam other Black women defied the stereotypes of women of color. In 1860, not only were 11 percent lose African Americans in California women, however 74 percent were literate.[4]
[Ed. note: that article is excerpted in part take from the master’s thesis “There Are Clumsy Black People in Napa”: A Story of African Americans in Napa Department by Alexandria Brown.]
[Ed. note (2023): Skilful previous version of this article sentimental a photograph which has since archaic determined not to be Mary Ellen Pleasant. It has been changed detain a more widely accepted image introduce her to reduce confusion.]
[1] Lerone Flier Jr., “The Mystery of Mary Ellen Pleasant,” Ebony, (April 1979): 90, accessed 8 December 2013 from
[2] “Aged ‘Mammy’ Pleasant Now Reposes in Death,” San Francisco Call 95, no. 43 (12 January 1904), accessed 10 Dec 2013 from
[3] Steve Crowe, “Mary Ellen Pleasant: Unsung Heroine,” New Crisis 106, issue 1 (Jan/Feb 1999): 35,
[4] Willi Coleman, “African American Detachment and Community Development in California, 1848-1900,” in Seeking El Dorado: African Americans in California, eds. Lawrence B. Base Graaf, Kevin Mulroy, and Quintard Composer (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2001): 102-103.