I first heard about Mary Ellen Pleasant about 10 years ago, when I was living in San Francisco & dating a triple Pisces from New Orleans named Kirk Pleasant. Suffice to say, that a curious number of synchronicities all lined up & introduced the amazing story of this inspirational woman into my life......
Here are just a few highlights:
Mary arrived in rough an' ready San Francisco on April 7, 1852-- a place with about 40,000 people, 700 drinking and gambling establishments, and 5 murders every 6 days. There were six men to every woman. It was not a safe place, but Mary was up to the challenge. Once there, she was forced to use two identities to thwart capture under California's Fugitive Slave Act. Under this law anyone without freedom papers could be captured and sent into slavery. Mary had no papers. Still Mary, both as "Mrs.Ellen Smith" (white boardinghouse steward/cook) and as "Mrs. Pleasants" (abolitionist/entrepreneur) helped her people. As Mrs. Smith, she served the wealthiest and most influential men in San Francisco, and using their regard for her as well as the "LaVeaux model" of leveraging their secrets for favors, she was able to get jobs and privileges for "colored" people in San Francisco. It is said that for this they nicknamed her "The Black City Hall."
from http://www.mepleasant.com/story.html
The reason she is not better known today is probably because of the scandals of the late 19th century which began by dragging her name through the mud in the courts over another person’s dishonored marriage contract. This court battle between Sarah Althea Hill and William Sharon smeared Mary Ellen badly, but the job was finished later when Teresa Bell, Thomas Bell’s widow, sued Mary Ellen over Thomas’ estate. The house Mary Ellen had designed for Thomas Bell and herself became known as the “House of Mystery” and the peculiar arrangements with Thomas’ farce of a “marriage” were exposed and paraded through the courts though they had nothing to do with the battle at hand. It does show you what a black woman and a white man thought they had to do in that time and place to have a life under the same roof.
The Hill/Sharon battle and Sharon’s newspaper allies, publicly named Mary Ellen as a Voodoo priestess (which she may have been) but went on to say that she was a baby stealer, a baby eater, a multiple murderess, a madam, a lying, conniving, cunning, schemer, and maybe, worst of all, hung the epithet of “Mammy” upon her. All the press from the 1880’s and beyond was extremely negative to an aging Mary Ellen. She was quoted on more than one occasion as saying, “DON’T call me Mammy!”, a request too often ignored by friend and foe alike.
from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Ellen_Pleasant
A few years later, after the Civil War and the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation, Mary Ellen Pleasant was able to drop her White persona and let everyone know that she was, in fact, African American. She provided financial assistance for Black people challenging the Jim Crow laws in California, and fought a legal battle to guarantee Black Californians the right to testify in court. In 1868 she brought a lawsuit against two San Francisco trolley car lines whose conductors had refused to allow her to ride. Her suit went to the California Supreme Court, where she won the right for all African Americans to ride the streetcars.
As Pleasant grew in power and influence, she attracted the attention of the media and various detractors, who began to refer to her as “Mammy Pleasant” behind her back. There were many rumors about her, concerning the way she obtained influence over San Francisco’s richest families—learning their secrets through African American servants whom she had helped to obtain the positions, then blackmailing the families, was something that many people thought she did. She was also said to practice voodoo to control people, and people claimed she had “hypnotic powers”. She ran a boardinghouse for her young female “protégés” who socialized with the wealthy and powerful men who knew Pleasant through business dealings; some accounts referred to her as a madam. Rumors circulated regarding mysterious deaths of several people connected with her, but she was never charged with a crime. In 1935 a San Francisco newspaper reported that a family acquaintance of Thomas Bell, the banker, swore before he died that Pleasant had given Bell drugged wine and pushed him over a banister to his death. Afterwards, Bell’s house was said to be haunted.
In any case, Mary Ellen Pleasant was one of the most influential women in San Francisco’s early history. She increased her fortune through speculation on mining ventures and investment in other businesses. Pleasant died in San Francisco at the age of 89. While accounts of her life are full of controversy, there is no question that she was a major force in San Francisco’s early days, and was the first powerful person to fight for the civil rights of Black Californians.
http://www.gibbsmagazine.com/Mary%20Ellen.htm
Even though her house is no longer standing, the trees that she planted in front of where it stood are ~ I go & visit them, every so often.
love all-ways,
mem
