(Horse & Buggy) ♪ Humming ♪ ♪ Humming ♪ Nar: The time is 1867; the place is the California State Supreme Court.

The case is an appeal by the North Beach and Mission Railroad Company.

It would overturn an award of $500 for pain and suffering given to Mary Pleasant for being denied access to a North Beach trolley in San Francisco Tyler: "Your honors, if you reverse this award, if you say that a Negro riding on the trains can be excluded, and there are no damages payable other than the nominal damages of two cents lost in the fare" what you are saying to a whole generation of San Franciscans is that you are not entitled to the equality the law guarantees.

♪♪ Nar: Despite Attorney Tyler's plea, the justices of the California State Supreme Court decided to reverse lower court's award to Pleasant for the pain and suffering of discrimination.

Yet this case lives on, and this is the story of the impact of that decision.

And the story of Mary Ellen Pleasant in word, deed and song.

♪♪ Mary Pleasant, often misnamed Mammy Pleasant was an African-American ex-slave who became a slave rescuer, in the East and in the West, and a civil rights activist in San Francisco in the 1850's.

[Humming is heard] Today and across the land, scholar/performer Dr. Susheel Bibbs, brings Mary Pleasant to life, using new research and Pleasant's own words Pleasant: It was about freedom.

My name is Mary Pleasant, and I come a long way, all the way from '17 to '04, 1817 to 1904 you're calling it.

They called me a woman of mystery.

I weren't a mystery.

I was an entrepreneur.

Of course, Mother of Civil Rights in California is what they' calling me now, and I'm right grateful.

And I'm gonna tell you how it come about an all, but first them newspapers !

You see, the newspapers have said so much about me, most of it wrong, that I just have to set the record straight, understand.

Nar: Despite her achievements and due to conflicting reports in the press which began in the 1880's, Mary Ellen Pleasant still remains mysterious to many scholars, even while others praise her achievements.

To my mind Mary Pleasant was the Rosa Parks of the 19th century.

She was a pioneer in so many respects for women's rights, African-America Civil rights, and just the rights of the individual to be one's self.

Mammy Pleasant is at once the best known of 19th century San Franciscans and the least known.

She is simultaneously a grand historical figure of great importance and also an elusive woman of mystery.

"Mammy Pleasant!"

It gives me the suspiration!

You know, Mary Pleasant endured a lot slavery in Georgia where she was born.

As a child taken to New Orleans, and then to Cincinnati and then finally up to indenture into Nantucket, she saw death and destruction in abolition.

She could abide a lot, but one thing she could not abide was the name "Mammy Pleasant."

She said, "I do not like to be called Mammy by everybody...." ....by everybody.

I'm not Mammy to everybody in California.

Jest between you an me, I don't care anything' about it, but they shan't do it!

They shan't nickname me at my age.

Nar: But how did Pleasant become the woman of mystery of the 1880's?

She began merely as Mary, an enslaved child in Georgia with no last name.

She then moved to indenture in Nantucket.

Ah, Nantucket....

I took the shackles off my mind in Nantucket.

Philbrick: This was the era of the Pacific whale fishery which meant that a typical Nantucket whale ship had about twenty-one men and would go out for about between two and three years.

And this meant that the men and boys of Nantucket who were involved with the whale fishery, which was most of the mean and boys on Nantucket, were gone for years at a time.

And this obviously put a lot of strain on the community.

And what's fascinating about the Nantucket community is that it was basically organized to support this global economy America's first global business.

Bibbs: It's very interesting the women in Nantucket.

They walked the widow's walk to look out for their whaler husbands, because the men were on ships and the women were left behind.

But they also became great businesswomen.

and even today, you go to Nantucket and you see the streets where -- the business street that the women held, And I think that's the legacy, the independence, and the business acumen that they passed to Mary Pleasant.

They had, they had the venerable Lucretia Mott.

Do ya know her?

Well, before your time.

Holt: Lucretia Mott was a Quaker, as most people know.

Most people know her as a social reformer, and she was.

She was a women's rights activist as well as an abolitionist.

Recent scholarship about her has persuaded me that, behind those multiple causes that she espoused, was a commitment to an idea of liberty that was both spiritual, physical and intellectual.

And it was this commitment to liberty that drove both her abolitionism and her women's rights activism.

Anyway's, she told 'em that all men was created equal, and they took it up.

And it become their cause, abolition, and all is what I'm telling.

And well they told me, and I took it up, and it become my cause.

and ya know my cause?

My cause.

♪♪ Well, my cause was the cause of freedom and equality for myself and for my people.

And I'd rather be a corpse than a coward.

Now if I'm dead, alright then.

But as long as I'm alivin', I'm gonna fight.

And I'm gonna fight to win!

And I don't want to be carried to victory on flowery beds of ease either.

I like to go through bloody scenes.

So, them newspapers can say what they want about me.

When I'm in a fight, any by-play doesn't faze me!

♪ O Freedom, O Freedom.

♪ O Freedom over me.

♪ And before I'd be slave, ♪ Id be buried in my grave ♪ and go home to my Lord and be free.♪ ♪ O Freedom.... My Quaker people, when I got a little older and my indenture is over, they said, "Now Mary ya got to go to work."

Not that I hadn't been working, but what they're saying was that I needed a trade.

So they put me up as a tailor's assistant in Boston.

And I learned vest making, dressmaking, and boot binding, and all what not.

Anyways now, one day I was coming out of the tailor shop where I worked.

And I had on a dress only I had big leg-O'-mutton sleeves on it.

Do ya know it?

Before your time.

Anyway's, I was spritely and handsome, even if I do say it.

Here we have Mary Ellen: a young, attractive woman, in her leg-O-mutton-sleeved dress, which she thought was pretty terrific, and she sings and people love her voice, and they And they applaud for what she does, and she has a job.

And she works in Boston, a bustling wonderful city.

And she meets this handsome man who's her idea of a hero.

I was coming, getting into a public carriage, and I stuck my head in and I said, "Do ya have room for me and my sleeves?"

Well, they all laughed, and the one who laughed the loudest was my future husband, James W. Smith.

Now James he took such a liking to me right away and he and his mother, the next weekend, they come to hear me sing at the church cornerstone-layin' ceremony.

I sang, sang all my life.

I was a paid soloist.

I sang, I sang, I sang, Jesus, Lover Of My Soul.

♪ Jesus, lover of my soul, let me to thy bosom fly.

♪ ♪ Jesus, lover of my soul, let me to thy bosom fly.

♪ You know that one?

It's my favorite.

Anyway's, why right after that, why James took such a liking to me that he wants to up and marry me.

Now, I thought it was a kind of rushed affair, mind you, but I looked at it business like.

Now James was a handsome mulatto , but he was passing as Cuban 'cause he was a spy for William Lloyd Garrison's The Liberator.

It was the abolitionist paper.

And James was a darin' operative, a slave rescuer, on the Underground Railroad.

You know it, don't you?

Well, you know it wasn't a train or a trolley?

Well, it was a trackless series of brave men and women and boys and girls.

and they was wrestin' slaves out of slavery and they was takin' em up from Ohio to New York and later up to Canada.

And like that, they was going' from New Orleans to Texas and on to Mexico.

And sometimes they were Virginia up to Nova Scotia - various tracks is what I'm telling - and I suppose that's why they was calling it a railroad.

Understand?

Like that.

Well James was a darin' slave rescuer on the Underground Railroad, and James was a rich merchant, So I said, "Yes."

Anyway's, everything was sort of like a put up job after that.

James wouldn't even let me keep the clothes what I'd made for my trousseau.

James wouldn't even let me alert my Quaker people.

All I felt, all I felt was that I'd somehow lost my freedom all over again.

I think the most significant thing about Mary Ellen Pleasant, as I read her life, is the fact that she didn't live her life as a victim She's very much an actor on the stage of history.

Anyway's, James died not too long after.

Oh I know, I know what ya thinking: some of you heard that I killed him.

Well, nothing' ever come of that.

And you know James, he left me a rich woman.

He left me $45,000 in gold and a plantation near Harpers Ferry Virginia.

Well now, I sold the plantation, and I remarried not too long after.

But James, James asked me to use that money in the cause of the colored race, and I kept that promise.

I kept that promise for myself.

I kept that promise, because I knew the pain of losing' my freedom, and I wanted to end that pain for everyone forever!

Nar: Mary Pleasant next lived in New Bedford, Massachusetts, a seat of the Underground Railroad and Pacific whaling.

There she married a Creole named John James Pleasance or "Pleasants."

Later they dropped the "s." John worked as a waiter while Mary worked on the Underground Railroad with William Grant Still of Philadelphia and other East-coast abolitionists.

Holt: Federal law, signed in 1793 by George Washington right here in Philadelphia, demanded that Federal judicial officials enforce the return of captured fugitives from slavery to their masters in Southern states or in slave holding states.

Pennsylvania, in order protect itself from an influx of slaveholders with their enslaved people, passed a law that said any slaveholding person who brings an enslaved person into the State of Pennsylvania enables that enslaved person to claim freedom under the laws of the state And so it flies in the face of Federal law.

Under these Personal Liberty Laws, therefore, William Still and Underground Railroad people, and people who helped fugitives in general, could invite enslaved people to claim freedom as soon as they set foot on the soil of Pennsylvania, though these laws to be usually upheld in a court, 'cause they weren't normally challenged under Federal law.

But it was possible to do, and it left an opening for people to operate.

Mary Ellen Pleasant's underground-railroad story begins with her enslavement in the South.

That's in our Southeast region.

She moved in her early years to Massachusetts.

That's in our Northeast region.

She was involved in slave rescues in the Midwest in Ohio.

That's our Midwest region, and due to her activities, she came out to California in the early 1850's in the early days of the Gold Rush, and that involves another component of this story Nar: Gold!

California Gold!

The year of Pleasant's second marriage was probably 1850.

Gold rush fever was on, and California had petitioned to join the union as an anti-slavery state so that slaves would not be brought there to work the gold fields.

But since this threatened to upset the balance of antislavery and slavery states, Senator Henry Clay negotiated a compromise -- the compromise of 1850.

Pleasant: The way I understand a compromise is that everybody agrees to something that nobody wants.

Anyway, what I'm telling' is that in it, this compromise, was the Fugitive Slave Law, and what it meant for me was that I was a slave rescuer, and they were turnin' up the heat on escaped slaves and slave rescuers, So I had to hide out with my Quaker people in Nantucket.

Then JJ and I, we went down to his people, his cousins in New Orleans.

As soon as we got there, that man took off for San Francisco Gold-rush Country Said he had to scout us a new life.

I stayed behind.

I stayed behind to learn a few things.

Bibbs: I found a model that Marie LaVeaux, the famous Voodoo Queen of New Orleans, passed on to Mary Pleasant that enabled her to become the mother of Civil rights in California.

Marie LaVeaux discovered a way of leveraging so that she pressured the enfranchised to help the disenfranchised.

Some people call it blackmail, but she knew the secrets of the rich, and she utilized those secrets to help them help the poor.

Mary Pleasant went to study with LaVeaux.

We know this because her grand-daughter, LaVeaux's grand daughter, saw her and recorded it.

Her name was Liga Foley.

These things tell us that Pleasant enacted that model in San Francisco.

She leveraged the secrets of the rich to help the poor.

She had a little cottage, just like Marie LaVeaux's where she tried to compromise the rich so that she had secrets to use as leverage.

She did so many of the same things that Marie LaVeaux did that I've coined the phrase that once was used by Luisah Teish: the Marie LaVeaux Model .

Pleasant effected the Marie LaVeaux Model of leveraging for favors from the rich to the poor to become the Mother of Civil Rights in CA.

Nar: Pleasant made a narrow escape to San Francisco after learning that slave catchers were closing in on her secret identity as a slave rescuer, Mary Pleasant sent John ahead.

She then prepared to flee the mansion where she worked as a free cook.

Just before sunset she stole out of the house and moved carefully down its walkway, to the path that led to the road.

Silhouetted against the setting sun, Pleasant hastened carefully toward the road above.

Suddenly a visiting planter on horseback appeared.

"What ya doing' here this time of evening,' gal," suspicious of a servant out on the pathway so late.

Nervous but prepared, Pleasant replied and handed him a forged note, which she claimed was a love note from the lady of the house Not wanting to get involved in a potentially private affair of the heart , the planter refused to look and harshly waived her on.

"Go on now!"

the planter retorted, and moved toward the house.

Relieved, Pleasant hurried towards the road and to Marie LaVeaux, who got her passage on a steamer to San Francisco.

♪♪ I remember standing on the deck of that ship looking back at the coast of New Orleans, my former home.

And I felt a kind of deep sadness, a kind chill in my soul and a chill in my bones, because I knew that it would be a long time before I got home again.

And that's when Tom come along, Thomas Bell: ole' Scotsman, Thomas Frederick Bell, my future business partner.

Tom, he took this ole Scots shawl, and he put it round my shoulders, Tom, he took this ole Scots shawl, and he put it round my shoulders, And he took the chill out of my soul and out of my bones.

Dear Tom, I miss him.

♪♪ (Steam Whistle) Nar: Pleasant entered a city with an array of characters ready to make a new start: forty-to-fifty thousand people consuming one million gallons of liquor a year; six men to every woman; and not surprisingly, four-hundred-to-seven-hundred saloons.

Of course, there were five murders every six days.

The city had burned down often, and so people were ready to build a better, safer place Starr: So San Francisco was making the transition from a raw frontier village to a city.

-just beginning to think about those things.

Her arrival couldn't have been more propitious for her.

Now, this was a woman who knew cities.

Her background: she knew New Orleans, she knew Boston, and she knew New York.

She knew a number of cities, so she would have fit into this developing urban context very well, which she did do.

Now I went to work, shortly after I arrived for wealthy businessmen, and I watched their investments.

And I had my money, and I put it out to work for me.

It was my habit to draw out silver and to purchase gold in South American and then to draw out the gold and put in the gold and take out the silver, and to purchase the gold and put in the gold and draw out the silver, and like that well my money multiplied rather rapidly.

I worked, and my money worked.

I was a great believer in work.

You do your work, you get it finished, and you sit on the lawn afterwards.

Now I can't say how well the work was done mind you, but it was done, and that's the thing.

Anyway's, as my money worked, I worked in civil rights.

You see, I know ya heard I was passing as a white woman, Mrs. Ellen Smith, boarding house proprietress.

But understand me, I come to California in April 1852, and the Fugitive Slave Law, it come to come to California in April 1852.

And they was arresting folks like me what didn't have freedom papers, and they was taken 'em back into slavery.

So I thought, better than go back there, I'll help here.

I will be spy, Mrs. Ellen Smith, understand.

Nar: In the 1850's Mrs. Pleasants was a secret activist by night and, a cook and manager of gold-rush boarding houses by day.

There she gained investment tips and befriended wealthy but lonely, young gold rush boarders.

Later these early friends became business moguls, senators and even governors of California, affording Pleasant the political clout to help her people.

Some say that the exotic cooking she did in her boarding houses was the forerunner to California Cuisine.

We should acknowledge her as being the queen of California gourmet.

Bibbs: If we think of California cuisine as a unique cuisine that is based in produce that is raised here in California-- that combines unique ingredients, then she probably was.

She was known as a famous cook even when she arrived here.

In fact when she decided to work, that was her first job.

Her recipes....she has them written in a small book that's in the San Francisco public library.

And they involve recipes from New England and recipes from the South, but they also involve ingredients here in California: flowers and all sorts of rare herbs.

And she held great fetes on the banks of California for the Minturn Brothers; They were the steamboat kings who ran the steamers to Sacramento, She did ice sculptures, But her cuisine was unique.

Moore: Not only were the dishes she prepared gourmet quality, but she orchestrated the people who would feast at her banquets.

I guess she's a pioneer of what we would call networking.

She understood the importance of not only the right food, but the right mix of people at the events from squatums to her banquets at her boarding house, So she has a remarkable talent.

She's an artist in that respect.

♪♪ Nar: California cuisine' named by modern Chefs.

Food of many cultures with a California touch.

Mary Pleasant's faire was known from mountains to mansions, served with her flair for art.

And when the demand for her services grew, Pleasant made sure that her patrons knew that her helpers would have to be black .

Mary Pleasant gave back to her community.

Black people had long worked as barbers and servants in San Francisco.

but Pleasant opened many new jobs and the first in home catering But secretly however, as Mrs.Pleasants, I was up in the fields rescuin' ex-slaves, And I was down on the docks with writs, and I was in the courts fighting for the right of testimony.

You know it, don't you?

Well understand me, Right of Testimony: If you can't testify in court, and we couldn't, then somebody could take and jump your claim and hit you on the head, And you can't say a thing about it, so we fought it!

Moss: She could have lived a very comfortable life, given the boundaries of mulatto society in the 19th century, and yet she never settled for that.

She was always pushing the boundaries.

She was also always putting her life at risk.

She was also always putting her life at risk for others who were even less fortunate than she.

And she had no....I always try to find the compelling reason for her to have done that.

And for me, that remains the mystery.

Why would she do that?

We was fighting to keep slavery out of California and ex-slaves in it.

And I even set some of 'em up in their own businesses.

And I put the rest of 'em up in my own.

I had tenant farms and dairy farms and laundry, and land, the land is your life, and all what not.

I mean to say, I mean to say that I prospered.

Moss: I find that what's remarkable about her being, for example, involved in the abolitionist movement and not content just simply to give flowery speeches or to donate to the cause, but actually to be a spy, to go right into the heart of slaveholding countries, to visit plantations in disguise, to be daring, to be a member of the Underground Railroad, the California Underground Railroad, for example.

And to spirit those enslaved African Americans to freedom.

I see her as being a community organizer and a stabilizing force in California.

Moss: These were people who were quite used to fighting the good fight.

They had been involved in abolitionist activities in places like New York, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, and Boston, so they weren't strangers to this.

And they just brought it here to the frontier, And they just kept.... they continued with this, and it's important to see Mary Ellen Pleasant in this light, because she was part of that network.

She also challenges us to ask how women exercised political influence in the 19th century.

She exercised influence, political influence, through her alliance of various kinds-- business and personal with very powerful men.

So she's part of the political history of the 19th century.

Moore: She was really eroding those stereotypes and molds not only that were placed on African Americans, but also for women.

And I think that is very important in a time when women had clearly prescribed roles and did not easily break out of those roles.

I prospered.

I prospered.

But t'weren't so for my people.

In '53 come the European immigrations, and I can't blame 'em.

They was starving' over there, and they had to come here to eat, but they was takin' all the little jobs what we had got for the colored.

♪ humming Then come the great depression, and the man on the bottom was feelin' it the worst.

And that's when I decided....

I decided to go back home.

Not to stay, mind you, but to help ole' John Brown end slavery once and for all.

forever!

[burlesque drum plays] What' she doing?

What's she doing?

♪♪ Well John Brown's plan was to capture the Federal arsenal at Harper's Ferry, Virginia, on the confluence of the Shenandoah and Potomac Rivers.

And he was going to do it with only twenty one men, foolhardy.

My job was to ride down the Roanoke River in Southern Virgini and tell the slaves that John was comin' so as they'd help him.

Well everything was going alright, But then John acted too soon, and he was worsted at Harper's Ferry Means, means he was captured and hung, and I was forced to flee for ma life.

You see, they found a letter on John Brown with my initials on it "MEP" but luckily the newspapers published it as WEP, And my bad writing' saved me.

Moss: As much as I wanted to believe the story of Mary Ellen Pleasant helping to finance the John Brown raid on Harper's Ferry, I found it difficult to believe, because I never was presented with any corroborating evidence, no hard evidence, that this happened.

[hum heard] Nar: Although some scholars doubt that Pleasant ever assisted John Brown, some have confirmed that she did.

Robinson: Mary Pleasant and her husband John come to Chatham in 1858, as far as I can figure, because that's when they bought the property over on Campbell Avenue.

Now, they were very active with, like I said, the Vigilance Committee with the who's who in Chatham at that time.

And were very supportive of the abolitionist movement.

For instance, she was a good friend of John Brown.

And you know, women were not allowed to attend the convention, but she knew Mr. Brown, was very involved with him, and supported his cause to free the slaves and set up an area in the United States where they could go and be free.

Understand me, John was a good man, mind you, but John said too much, and John wrote too much.

And there's nothing' that people live to regret more as to what they write and set their names ta.

But understand me, I never, I never regretted what I done for John Brown or for the cause of Liberty for my race.

At Pleasant's request, her headstone bears the inscription, She Was A Friend of John Brown .

[fife and drum sounds] And as soon as they signed that Emancipation Proclamation, as soon as they forced Mr. Lincoln to sign it, I declared myself a colored woman, Mary E. Pleasant and fought in the open for Civil rights.

During the Civil War, we threw the secessionist press in the streets, and we threw the secessionist minister out of town.

Starr: I would say that California during the Civil War was overwhelmingly pro-Union, but south of the Tehachapies was a pro-Southern sentiment.

But the political majority.... the control of the state was in the hands of the Union Party from 1960 on.

And then come my proudest hour.

All across the land, they was trying' to stay on the trolleys or to ride the trolley system.

Well here in California, we was trying' to stay on it.

Well, I fought cases in and out of court, and I won in both.

And in 1866 and 1868, we could ride the trolleys in San Francisco.

And in 1866 and 1868, we could ride the trolleys in San Francisco.

Oppenheimer: In the 1860's we had a growing movement of public transit through trolley cars in major cities around the United States.

And Black Americans were being excluded from riding on those cars, and that was important.

And Mary Pleasant was the first, or among the first, of a group of Black Americans to challenge those laws, And she challenged them in San Francisco with at least two case that she brought herself, and I suspect, in orchestrating other cases that were brought here as well.

♪ humming Nar: What we know from her testimony is that Pleasant was near 2nd and Folsom Streets in San Francisco when she hailed a trolley car.

The driver refused to stop.

Pleasant took them to court and received a judgment of $500 for the pain of emotional distress.

But although her lawyer fought it, the judgment was reversed.

Oppenheimer: So the case involved in which I ended up citing the Pleasants case: In 1980, two African American men were fired from their jobs, working for a company that produced mobile homes.

And they brought a lawsuit in San Bernardino County challenging the decision to fire them.

And in their lawsuit they asked not only for back wages but they also asked for damages for their emotional distress.

And they asked for punitive damages: damages intended to punish the defendant for its wrongdoing.

So let me read to you, if I may.

what George Tyler said in his argument in the Supreme Court in 1867.

He said to the judges [words overlap] "....Let this court once hold that all a Negro can recover is nominal damages, for being refused permission to ride in the cars on account of his color.

Then that class of persons can never enjoy the privilege in San Francisco.

My grandchildren will be back before the grandchildren of you judges, making the same argument 100 years from now."

♪ humming "And here I am."

And if you rule the same way as you did over 100 years ago, my grandchildren will be back before your grandchildren making the same argument again.

Now I'm not prepared to say that had any influence on the court, but what I can very happily report is that the court did rule in The Commodore-Homes Case that punitive damages and compensatory damages for emotional distress are available under California law in employment discrimination, race discrimination cases, and that remains the law in California today.

That's how it come.

that's how it come...

Mother of Civil Rights is what I'm tellin'.

That's how it come, and you just have to figure if I owned it up.

Nar: More than 100 years later, Mary Pleasant's 19th Century case had helped alter modern-day civil rights.

It was her greatest legacy.

Afterwards she turned her attention to free enterprise.

By the 1870's, Pleasant had amassed a fortune with her partner, a Scotsman named Thomas Bell.

JJ passed on in '77.

Tom and I, we made a killing in quicksilver and milling and mining and railroads and all what not, to the tune of $30,000,000.

We made $30,000,000!

Bibbs: Their fortunes grew together through the silver mining and the holding companies that the Bank of California had during the silver mining period up in the Comstock Lode in 1859, thereabout.

Now this was a problem, because no one knew that they were amassing this amount of money together, and later, when Pleasant thought about it, she realized that he was a man who was not married.

So during this period, she tried to get him married.

She could not marry him because of the social situation.

Pleasant: I built a great mansion, and Tom moved into it with me.

And we put this woman named Teresa up as his so-called wife so that Tom's begin' with me would not ruin his reputation in Society.

I know, I know, but, but ya see, I thought, I thought nothing could touch us.

Nar: She tried to mask their affair by bringing in a proxy wife named Theresa as a facade for the public and by calling herself Bell's housekeeper.

But knowing Pleasant's wealth, the public grew suspicious, so they called her home The house of mystery.

Pleasant: I even fought a great court battle against the great Senator William Sharon.

I fought, I backed the plaintiff in a great court battle gainst the great Senator William Sharon.

But uh, But uh, things just didn't turn out like I planned is all.

In '92 Tom died, and ole' Senator Sharon's boys and ole Theresa Bell sure did scandalize my name!

[drum sound] ♪ Well, I met ole' Sharon the other day.

♪ ♪ Give him my right hand, ♪ and as soon as ever my back was turned, ♪ ♪ he went and scandalized my name.

♪ They called me a blackmailer.

[drum sound] They called me a baby stealer [drum sound] And some of 'em even said that I killed my partner, Tom.

Now that is all that I will ever say about that.

Bibbs: The problem was that it wasn't really a happy life.

He seemed to have loved her.

Many people said that he did.

He would defend her if anyone criticized her.

But at the same time, when he died, he left a kind of punitive will.

We know that perhaps they had a falling out, that perhaps he discovered that she had tricked him in several ways.

We know that perhaps she was the cause of his death, because she found that he had betrayed her.

It was a complex relationship something that she never talked about.

Now you put this down, please!

You please put this down: they even called me a madame.

$30,000,000 and a madame!

Now understand me, I might of owned a few bordellos on the side, mind ya, but I, I was a capitalist by trade!

♪ Well I met Teresa the other day.

♪ ♪ give her my right han' ♪ and as soon as ever my back was turned, ♪ ♪ she went an' scandalized my name.

♪ ♪ Well, do ya call that a sister?

♪ Bibbs: We have to then understand Theresa Bell.

When she came here, she ended up in a bordello.

When Pleasant took her out and educated her to become Bell's wife, she was thrilled; she thought Pleasant was the most wonderful person in the world.

But when she ended up in that house of mystery with no friends and only Parisian gowns and German lessons and French lessons, and no contact with Bell and Pleasant really.

When she ended up being shunned by the children they had brought in, which the world thought were her children, she became jealous of Pleasant, and she wrote that in her diary.

She became angry with Pleasant, and later, when she realized that Pleasant was sneaking money out of the accounts that she didn't realize belonged to Pleasant, she snapped.

And she had a vendetta against Pleasant that went into the newspapers.

She writes about it in her diary, so we don't have to guess.

[drum sound] Nar: The newspapers mockingly dubbed Mary Pleasant Queen of the Voodoos, not understanding the religious heritage of her mother and Mademoiselle Marie LaVeaux a heritage of Power that had often helped her to pressure for civil rights in San Francisco [drum sound] Bibbs: What is voodoo?

Very simply, it is an earth-based, earth centered religion very much like shamanism, like native American religion-- in which the priestess functions to help the people in terms of ritual and in terms of health.

So they do formularies as well as ceremony.

Nar: Pleasant used her much-misunderstood voodoo religion as a means to social change.

Teish: I feel that I have inherited a great gift from her as an affinity ancestor: As someone whose life I can look at and learn from, as someone whose behavior is a model for our times.

She functioned very well in a time of a crisis.

Right now we live, I always say that we presently in a war zone with an epidemic during a natural disaster.

This is really a point of crisis.

The same things were happening during her time.

(voodoo ceremony) Nar: After court battles with powerful enemies and scandals in the press had damaged her reputation, Mary Pleasant had lost her good name.

And when the public began calling her mammy .

Pleasant knew that she had underestimated the times.

♪♪ Starr: The 1880's is the decade in which the Mammy Pleasant figure emerges, but it's also the decade in which San Francisco becomes more self conscious about itself culturally.

So there's just a moving away of the terrible social tension of the 1870's and the riots, etc.-- and moving towards a much more consolidated, high-provincial identity.

And in the 1890's San Francisco would have become a very self-conscious city.

Moss: But we also had the rise of institutions of a of repression, oppression, and physical violence that led to what we know as "Jim Crowe."

And we're talking about the period in the 1890's where we even had the passage of Plessy versus Ferguson, which was, of course, the "separate but equal facilities."

And that became federal law.

Lynching, while never completely erased, certainly was on the increase.

We had the creation of the Ku Klux Klan, White Citizens Councils, uh all over.

And we must understand that California was not immune ♪♪ Given that light, I can understand why she would have been a target because all African Americans were targets.

At the time it was an attempt to right the ship , that something had gone wrong, and now everyone had to be put in their place.

Moore: And this title of "mammy" conjures up a number of different images.

It really, when used as it's been traditionally used, puts one in one's place.

It confines and consigns black women to a specific inferior, subordinate, and servile position.

and uh, so I think that it was an attempt to categorize Mary Ellen Pleasant in that very narrow box.

Nar: By the 1900's, her great contributions where all but forgotten Moss: Because she always crossed the line, she's someone we talk about and we study.

We want to know more about her.

And I've said before, if you ask me who Mary E Pleasant is, she's a mystery inside a riddle inside an enigma.

I forget who said that.

I think Churchill said that.

But I think it's appropriate.

Bibbs: She had a heart that was passionate, and when she felt passionately about something, her he acted, and her head came to follow.

And what this meant was the head was either going to strategize what she was passionate about whether it be civil rights or destroying an enemy, or that the heart was left to clean up after what she had done.

Pleasant was a woman of the old West: she would shoot first and ask questions later if she was backed into a corner.

If we understand this about her, we understand that, if someone cornered her, she would retaliate.

Then the heart would come in and feel sorry about it.

The head would come in to strategize about how to cover it up.

This made her seem to be two people.

She wasn't.

She was a person who defended herself first and foremost.

That was the head.

She was a person who could love others across boundaries of race and class; that was the heart.

They really worked in tandem with the heart in the lead.

Never mind....

I just want to say that I want no vindication.

I do not hold a vindictive thought against anybody.

I have always desired to be at peace with God, and I desire to be with man.

And so before I died, before I died, I forgive 'em all.

And now to you who've stood by me through all this evil rapport and good, I just want to say thank you and farewell.

And with my favorite song, remember me.

♪ Jesus Lover of My Soul let me to thy bosom fly.

♪ ♪ Jesus Lover of My Soul let me to thy bosom fly.

♪ ♪ Jesus lover of my soul let me to thy bosom fly.

♪ ♪ Jesus lover of my soul let me to thy bosom fly.

♪ ♪♪ Cohen: What I believe Mary Ellen's relevance is to all of us is the ability to survive and to triumph over no matter what life gives you.

J Moore: Well I have to say, she's probably one of the giants of California history that we all owe a great deal to.

S Moore: When you look at the historical context on which Pleasant emerged and you look at her life, you understand what African Americans were endeavoring to do in the mid-to-late 19th century.

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