There was this incredible African American woman named Mary Ellen Pleasant. She was born around 1812 or 1814. When she was still a girl, she was sent to Nantucket to work in a shop as an indentured servant. She probably didn’t have any formal schooling, but she studied people, she watched them and listened to them. When most people saw a black girl as invisible and unimportant, she was there taking in every word.
It turned out that the shopkeepers she worked for were Quakers and they were passionate abolitionists. Through them, Mary Ellen had the chance to connect with many who were working to subvert and end slavery in this country. She was quick-witted, charismatic, and quite savvy. She learned how to run a business and how to work for liberty all in one go.
So, it’s not too surprising that when she grew up, she and her first husband were very active on the Underground Railroad, helping to transport hundreds of runaway slaves to northern states and into Canada so that they could be free. Sadly, her first husband James died sometime in the 1840s after they had only been married for four years. James was intent that she use her inheritance to keep supporting the Underground Railroad – to save as many people as she could.
She married again around 1848 and her second husband told her that California looked like a good place for African Americans to settle. Not only had the Gold Rush started, but slavery had technically been outlawed in California for decades (when California had been a Mexican territory). It entered the Union in 1850 as a free state and, well, one black New England prospector wrote home that California, “is the best place for black folks on the globe.” He said, “all a man has to do is to work, and he will make money.” On top of that, 90% of the settlers and people living in California were male and that meant that there was high demand for people to fill stereotypically “female” job vacancies. When Mary Ellen made it to California in 1852, she got a job as a cook and earned ten times as much as she would have back East.
But you remember what I told you about Mary Ellen – she was clever and she listened even when people didn’t pay attention to her. After all, she was just a cook or a waitress or a servant. She got work in rich peoples’ homes and in upscale eateries. She took great care to overhear all those tidbits of information that these businessmen were leaving out like breadcrumbs. With her inheritance from her first marriage, she invested in every up and coming, successful business venture around. She invested in mines and banks; opened laundries, dairies, and boarding houses; held stocks and real estate. She did so well for herself – now you might not believe this, but it is true – she did so well for herself, that at its peak, her fortune was estimated at $30 million dollars. That would be about $647 million dollars in today’s money.
I have said, “she did…well for herself,” but what she actually did was to take her mounting fortune and use it to support the community. She made San Francisco a new destination for the Underground Railroad. She helped blacks, whether escaped slaves or not, to get set up in paying jobs all over the city, with temporary lodging, and with safe houses when they needed it. Quite often, when they were unjustly accused and brought to trial, she paid their legal fees and supported their defense, spending thousands of dollars. When John Brown was gaining steam, she went back East to support his work and donated $30,000 to his cause.
When she got back home to San Francisco, they started calling her “Black City Hall” because they knew that if they needed justice, they could come to Mary Ellen and she would do everything that her money and status made available to her. She sued a streetcar company for not letting blacks ride and she won in 1866. She sued a different one because their cars were segregated and she won that suit, too. Today they call her the mother of civil rights in California.
You can imagine that there were quite a few white people who did not care for this unimaginably wealthy, no-nonsense, powerhouse of a Black woman. The press slandered her up and down. They called her “Mammy Pleasant” to take her down a peg – to remind her that she should be what they thought Black women were meant to be. Rumors flew like vultures that she was a blackmailer, a murderer, a madam, a Voodoo priestess who cursed and ruined unsuspecting whites. Near the end of her life, she was taken to court and had most of her fortune taken from her. She was kicked out of the home she had designed and paid for. Her obituary in the San Francisco Examiner read “Mammy Pleasant Will Work Weird Spells No More” and rumors spread for decades that she haunted the house she had built.
Mary Ellen Pleasant might seem like an odd person to be talking about when we’re meditating on the Beatitudes, but I think that one of the common threads that connects all of the people that Jesus says are blessed is that they are all…well…discounted by society. The poor in spirit are those bent, even feeling crushed by poverty. But this isn’t a poverty of money or resources – it is feeling a poverty of connection with God. Blessed are those who are dealing with a dark night of the soul, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
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There weren’t many Mary Ellen Pleasants in the 19th century and for good reason. It was almost impossible to break through peoples’ prejudices about black people, about women, about people who started out poor and dared to try to enter the ranks of the wealthy and established. And yet, it was precisely peoples’ easy dismissal of her that gave her opportunities to spy out the best tips, to form partnerships where she could, and then to use her growing wealth and influence to build something good for those around her regardless of what the haters had to say about it.
Sources:
https://www.biography.com/news/african-american-firsts-history
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Ellen_Pleasant
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/obituaries/mary-ellen-pleasant-overlooked.html
https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2017/06/02/a-girl-full-of-smartness
http://www.foundsf.org/index.php?title=Mary_Ellen_Pleasanthttp://www.sfmuseum.org/hist10/mammy.html