A civil rights hero for public transit

When I came upon this banner celebrating Mary Ellen Pleasant (lived 1814(?) – January 4, 1904) on one of the most obscure public bus barns in the city, I'd never heard of her.

In case that's true of you too, here are some glimpses of the life of this amazing San Franciscan. The New York Times featured her in one of their obituaries for people they know the publication had "Overlooked."

Pleasant lived her life between the lines of legitimacy and infamy, servitude and self-invention. She became known throughout San Francisco as Mammy Pleasant, because of the years she spent as a domestic servant. Yet she was also, incredibly, a former slave who became a millionaire. Add to that improbable pairing, a dedicated abolitionist, credited with being an important conductor of the Underground Railroad.

What we know of her life history is murky, apparently including fables she encouraged herself and inventions in 19th century tabloid newspapers which found her an attractive subject. It seems mostly agreed she was born in Georgia or Louisiana sometime in the second decade of the 19th century and spent her youth as a domestic servant for a wealthy white Nantucket household, probably abolitionists. In the 1830s, she married a James Henry Smith, a white or perhaps mixed race Virginia planter. During their marriage, she led groups of enslaved men and women to freedom via the Underground Railroad to Canada. When Smith died in 1840s he left her a significant inheritance. She claimed to have helped fund John Brown's attack on the federal garrison at Harpers Ferry.

She remarried to John Pleasant and went looking for new opportunities, again according to her delayed obit:

In 1848, the California Gold Rush began and word soon spread that even blacks were free to seek their fortune on the West Coast. Pleasant heeded the call. She moved to San Francisco and found work as a cook, invisible and unimportant once again. She shrewdly eavesdropped on the wealthy people she served, and using the information, invested bits of her inheritance. “It’s quite possible that the jobs she had as a domestic were a cover that she was using because she clearly made her money from investments,” [Lynn] Hudson, [her] biographer, said in an interview.

Her portfolio grew to include shares in businesses that ranged from dairies and laundries to Wells Fargo Bank. She owned restaurants and boardinghouses, which locals whispered were actually brothels. In the 1890 census, she stated that she was a “capitalist” by profession. 

... She formed a decades-long business partnership, possibly romantic, with a white man named Thomas Bell. After his death, it turned out that much of Pleasant’s portfolio, including the mansion she designed and had built, were held in Bell’s name. Historians believe that the pair used his name in many of the business dealings to facilitate what surely would have been more difficult for a woman, and especially for a black woman. Bell’s widow sued Pleasant and won control of the Bell estate. In an instant, Pleasant’s fortune was diminished. She died in 1904.

Yet that spectacular rise and fall in wealth is not what caused Mary Ellen Pleasant to be heralded by our bus service. According to an ACLU Northern California history website, along the way this indomitable woman won a major victory for civil rights in her new state.

In 1866, a street car conductor in San Francisco refused to let her board because she was black. Outraged, Pleasant sued. The case went all the way to the California Supreme Court. In a historic decision, the court ruled that segregation on streetcars was illegal in California.

In keeping with so many episodes in her life, she didn't receive the money damages a lower court had ordered. But she landed on her feet, with an implausible victory.

San Francisco has always been a boom and bust town attracting determined, unconventional characters. Against the odds, Mary Ellen Pleasant found a right place for her talents and made it a better one.