San
Francisco
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."
In the "colored" community, in her true identity as Mrs. Pleasants, she used her
money to help ex-slaves fight unfair laws and to get lawyers or businesses
in California. She became an expert capitalist, owning every kind of
business imaginable, and she prospered. However, her people suffered
as European immigrations took the menial jobs once held for them and
as anti-black sentiment and national depression mounted. So, in 1858
Mary decided to return East --not to live, but--as she once said in
a letter -- to help her former brother in law gain release from slavery
and to help abolitionist John Brown end slavery forever.
In Canada, she
and JJ bought land on Campbell St. to help Brown house the slaves
that he planned to free near Harper's Ferry, Virginia. His plan was
to capture the Federal arsenal there with only 21 men. He would set
up marroon-like millitia made up of runaway slaves throughtout the
Virginia Mountains, as the Haitiens had done. Then, he would ferret
some slaves from there to Canada. Mary gave Brown money for arms and
came back the following fall to ride (in disguise as a jockey) in
advance of Brown to alert slaves near Harper's Ferry of his coming.
It was a good, but risky, plan, but, unlike some other Black leaders,
Mary (believing that slavery had to be ended by force) was willing
to help. "I'd rather be a corpse than a coward," was always her motto.
Of course, Brown
acted too soon and was hanged, and Mary narrowly escaped with her
life. On her return, however (hunted for treason), she continued to
fight, and after the Emancipation Proclamation and the California
Right-of-Testimony of 1863 law, she declared her race openly. She
orchestrated court battles to test the right of testimony, and in
1868 her battle for the right of blacks to ride the San Francisco
trolleys without fear of discrimination set precedent in the California
Supreme Court.
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