![]() ![]() ![]() “My cause,” Pleasant wrote in one of her memoirs, “was the cause of freedom and equality for myself and for my people. She was known as “The Black City Hall” - the place you go to get what you need - who helped black people get jobs on steamers, in white homes and in her own businesses.Īlmost a century before Rosa Parks, she challenged San Francisco’s segregated transit system in court, winning the right for black people to ride the streetcars without being thrown off. ![]() ![]() While the wealthy white people of San Francisco society knew her as the white boardinghouse proprietress, San Francisco’s growing black community knew her real identity. A plaque commemorates Mary Ellen Pleasant's civil rights achievements in Pacific Heights, placed by the San Francisco African American Historical & Cultural Society. She used them as another kind of currency, not just to rise in society but to further her real cause: bringing the Underground Railroad out West. Pleasant deliberately stayed close to the action in the boardinghouses she ran and later owned, learning a lot of private things about the influential men who stayed there. So Pleasant invested her sizable wealth in property, establishing boardinghouses and laundries - anything and everything she correctly thought would “be a niche in San Francisco to make more money,” says Bibbs. She found a town filled with men come to make their Gold Rush fortunes, far from home and in need of lodging, food and domestic services. (Carly Severn / KQED)Īfter her first husband died, Pleasant took the $45,000 in gold she now had from his estate and arrived by steamer in San Francisco in 1852 - still passing as white. “She often said that words were made to conceal feelings - and that she was good at it.” Sacramento writer and performer Susheel Bibbs. “She was very used to being covert,” says Bibbs. That double life included presenting as a white woman when she could. In this world, nothing could ever be as it seemed - and concealment, disguise and duality were weapons in Pleasant’s armory from the start. There on the East Coast, the young Pleasant became a crucial figure in the civil rights fight, secretly teaming up with abolitionists and rescuing escaped slaves on the Underground Railroad. We do know that she was born into slavery in Georgia, and was raised in Nantucket, Massachusetts, “in indenture,” says Bibbs. Pleasant wrote three autobiographies - but each one contradicts the other on basic facts, such as the year of her birth. Mary Ellen Pleasant pictured in the San Francisco Chronicle in the 1890s (Courtesy San Francisco Chronicle) “Her life is so enshrouded in mystery because she was her own spin doctor,” says Sacramento writer and performer Susheel Bibbs, who has studied Pleasant’s story for decades. Yet, he says, she was also described as a witch, a “voodoo queen” and even a murderer. So who was the real Mary Ellen Pleasant? "Rather be a Corpse than a Coward” The story Cagigal tells our group under those trees is instantly captivating: how Pleasant, a black woman, came to San Francisco in the mid-1800s and defied white society’s constraints and prejudices to not only amass great wealth, but to also use her power to immeasurably advance the cause of civil rights in the city. Her spirit, Cagigal tells the assembled ghost hunters, is said to summon chills, frighten dogs and even throw nuts from the nearby eucalyptus trees at passers-by. This unlit corner is said to be haunted by the ghost of Mary Ellen Pleasant, a 19th century entrepreneur who once lived in a now-vanished mansion nearby, and who actually planted these eucalyptus trees. The first stop on the tour, at Bush and Octavia, holds a real-life story stranger than any Halloween legend. The crowd listens to Christian Cagigal telling the story of Mary Ellen Pleasant on the San Francisco Ghost Hunt tour (Anne Wernikoff / KQED) From tales of ghostly apparitions to aristocrats meeting grisly ends, every corner brings another ghoulish story from San Francisco history. This tour is led most nights by performer Christian Cagigal, who leads his flock through these steep streets in full 19th century dress, top hat and clacking cane. This is where the San Francisco Ghost Hunt begins. The corner of Bush and Octavia streets in San Francisco’s Pacific Heights neighborhood is poorly lit - made darker still by the canopy of eucalyptus trees overhead. Listen to this and more in-depth storytelling by subscribing to The California Report Magazine podcast. ![]()
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