8

Mother of Civil Rights in California

Mary Ellen Pleasant and JJ returned to San Francisco after John Brown was executed in December 1859. “Brown was an earnest, sincere man and as brave a man as ever lived, but he lacked judgment and was sometimes foolhardy,” she lamented. In California, she and JJ regrouped. Her funds were depleted by more than $40,000 ($976,000), principally from her investment in Brown’s insurrection. Pleasant had staked so much on Harpers Ferry. However, she would not entertain the thought that it had been a mistake. “I never regretted the times or the money I spent on the idea,” she said.

Pleasant took a job as a domestic servant for a wealthy San Francisco industrialist named Selim Woodworth. He lived in a mansion high up in the city’s hills, with dozens of rooms and a view of the bay. After hiring Pleasant, he moved both her and JJ into his home. As the house manager, Pleasant supervised his staff of maids, chauffeurs, butlers, and cooks, and assisted his young wife, Lisette, in looking after the couple’s children and large extended family who lived at the house, including Selim’s elderly grandmother.

Pleasant threw herself into the work. It was just a few months ago that she believed she would be helping John Brown lead a slave revolt and govern a free black colony. Now she was working as the help. Pleasant’s arrangement allowed her to get back on her feet and make up some of her monetary losses. Head domestics in San Francisco were paid handsomely—upward of $200 a month ($5,423)—and were provided room and board. Pleasant was not one to let her pride get in the way of making progress.

The bright spot in her new role was Selim’s wife. Lisette was in her twenties and young enough to be Pleasant’s daughter. Lisette was blond with a slight frame, and tiny compared to the towering Pleasant. The two quickly became friends, and spent the days walking the hallways, leaning on each other, and supervising the staff. Lisette sometimes affectionately referred to Pleasant as “mama.”

A LITTLE OVER A YEAR AFTER PLEASANT RETURNED TO CALIFORNIA, Abraham Lincoln was elected president and soon after the Civil War began. Pleasant was gladdened. “My [work with Brown] seemed at first like a failure, but time proved that the money was well spent,” she said. “It paved the way for the war.” Woodworth had to leave home when he was ordered to return to the navy to command a gunboat, the USS John P. Jackson, as part of a fleet detached to the Mississippi River to sink Confederate ships and help conquer the Mississippi ports. Perhaps in gratitude for his hospitality, Pleasant decided to remain at the Woodworths’ during the war and look after the household. There she continued to manage the house and help his young wife with the family. When the war ended and Selim returned home, Pleasant and JJ moved out. Afterward, Pleasant and Lisette remained close and Pleasant stopped by the house frequently to help her run the house.

Just after the war ended Pleasant made a splash on San Francisco’s social scene, when she threw a wedding for her daughter, Lizzie, who had moved from the East. Lizzie had fallen for a businessman named R. B. Phillips. The wedding was covered by San Francisco’s black newspaper, The Elevator, which called the affair splendid entertainment. The expensively fashioned gala was the first public display of Pleasant’s wealth and the beginning of her embracing a more public profile.

DURING THE RECONSTRUCTION YEARS IN SAN FRANCISCO, Pleasant entered a new phase in which she took a higher profile in both her business and activist efforts. As African Americans readied to fight for their rights, black San Francisco was dealt a blow in 1862, when the California courts awarded the land of the black millionaire William Leidesdorff to the estate of Joseph Folsom, a white industrialist who swindled him out of the land. Chief among the concerns of African Americans in San Francisco after the war was the desegregation of San Francisco’s streetcars. The cars, which provided fast and affordable transport, were off-limits to blacks. The drivers were instructed not to stop for African Americans and not to let them board. Pleasant made it her mission to desegregate the streetcars.

To do so she devised a plan to catch the streetcar companies in the act of discriminating, in violation of the freshly minted Civil Rights Act of 1866, and then file suit against them. She began with the Omnibus Railroad & Cable Company, which served the southern part of San Francisco, where many African Americans lived. One afternoon in 1866, she waited on a street corner as a streetcar approached, pulled down the track by horses. When the car stopped, Pleasant got on but was told by the driver to get off. She stepped off the car and later that day filed a lawsuit. Before the case could reach court, the streetcar company contacted Pleasant to make a settlement with her. Pleasant dropped the suit in exchange for Omnibus’ agreeing to allow African Americans to ride its cars. But even after she withdrew her claim, she wasn’t finished; she was going to go after San Francisco’s other big rail company.

Pleasant decided to try to catch the North Beach and Mission Railroad Company in the act of discrimination. The NBMRR was a much bigger company that served the wealthy neighborhoods in the north of San Francisco. They would not give in as easily as Omnibus, so Pleasant had to lay her trap precisely. She enlisted the help of Lisette Woodworth, the matriarch of one of the city’s most respected white families. Everything went as planned: on September 27, 1866, they met near Lisette’s house, and Lisette boarded the car one stop before Pleasant. When the streetcar approached Pleasant, she flailed her arms to try to get the driver to stop. The driver looked at her but kept driving. Afterward, Pleasant hired a high-priced attorney named George W. Tyler and sued. The lawyer filed a suit in late 1866 or early 1867 charging that “the agents and servants of the defendant (NBMRR) acted under instructions received from said defendant requiring them to refuse to stop the cars of said defendant to allow ‘colored people’ or people of African Descent, to get on board.” He added that she had “suffered greatly in her mind” and furthermore “was compelled to and did proceed on foot to her destination, not being at the time in a physical condition to do so, causing thereby great suffering of body.” Lisette testified that she had been on the car when it had bypassed Pleasant.

ON THE DAY HER CASE WAS HEARD IN COURT, Pleasant, George Tyler, and Lisette arrived at the court thronged by reporters.

Inside the courtroom, Pleasant and NBMRR’s lawyers made their arguments. Finally, Pleasant’s star witness, Lisette Woodworth, took the stand.

“Can you describe the circumstances of the NBMRR incident?” George Tyler asked.

“I was in the car when she hailed it. I saw her hail it, and the conductor took no notice of her and walked into the car,” Woodsworth began. “Said I to the conductor, ‘Stop this car; there is a woman who wants to get in.’ His answer was, ‘We don’t take colored people in the cars.’ I then said, ‘You will have to let me out.’”

“How long have you known Mrs. Pleasant?”

“Ten years,” she replied. “I know her well enough that I call her ‘Mamma’ sometimes.”

The court decided in Pleasant’s favor and declared that NBMRR had discriminated against her on the basis of her race. The courts ordered NBMRR to desegregate its cars and awarded Pleasant $500 ($6,863) in damages. It was a landmark victory.^* The win was celebrated all over San Francisco by African Americans with rounds of beer and cigars.

During the Civil War, the California law that banned blacks from testifying in court was revised by the state legislature to award blacks’ testimony rights. When Pleasant took the stand in her suit, it was the first prominent court case in California in which an African American could testify, to the chagrin of those in the state who were angry about the growing role of minorities in California.

In 1867, as Pleasant’s case was being decided, Californians in a backlash elected a white supremacist Democrat, Henry Huntly Haight, as governor.

The white newspapers downplayed Pleasant’s victory and instead focused on Lisette’s comment that she knew Pleasant well enough to call her “Mamma.” The papers nicknamed Pleasant “Mammy Pleasant,” invoking the racist stereotype of the plantation mammy. Pleasant was from the North and had never lived on a plantation; nonetheless, the name stuck.^* “When certain newspapers tried to slacken my character, I thought to myself, they must have some money to pay their hands with, and if they can get a dollar for abusing me, it helped maintain printers’ wages and kept more people at work, and I like to see people employed,” she later stated.

For racists in San Francisco, Pleasant’s desegregating their streetcars was only the latest blow. After the Civil War, Chinese immigrants had begun migrating to California in large numbers to work in the mines and open laundries. Their presence was met with anger by many among California’s mostly white population. In retaliation, anti-Chinese laws were passed, including a tax on the wages of foreign miners, and the San Francisco police adopted a policy of ignoring crimes if the victims were Chinese or Indian, leading to a massacre of Indians in 1870 and a mass lynching of Chinese immigrants in 1871.

After she won in court, Pleasant purchased a mansion in downtown San Francisco and began making renovations to turn it into a boardinghouse. The house was built of dark-colored stone and rose three stories with dozens of rooms, a parlor, and a formal dining room. The property was located within walking distance of city hall, the banking district, and the opera house, making it a prime choice of lodging for the city’s rich bachelors. She outfitted the house with imported armchairs and chaises, velvet drapes, and fine art. “It was the leading boardinghouse in San Francisco and set the best table,” she bragged. “Many of the best families of the city lived with me.” She put up politicians, bankers, and industrialists at the home, serving them five-course meals she herself prepared and charming them with elegant soirees that she threw in the ballroom of the house. Her boardinghouse was popular with men from the South. “Southerners love niggers,” she commented.

In her first year of operation, she boarded six tenants and charged them a little over $300 ($5,000) a month; she made $15,000 ($300,000) in profit her first year. She also opened two laundries to offer cleaning services to her boarders and add another source of income. Her laundries were set up in the backs of stores. Inside, African American men and women she hired dredged soiled garments on wooden washing boards in metal tubs of frothy water. The laundry business met a huge demand. It was common to see even wealthy men walking the streets of San Francisco with brown tobacco and coffee stains on their shirts. Those who did have their clothes laundered did so by having them shipped off to China or the Sandwich Islands (Hawaii), where they would be laundered and returned on cargo vessels, a process that was prohibitively expensive—upward of $25 ($600) for a dozen shirts—and painfully slow. Many chose to wear their soiled garments instead. Early laundries in California such as Pleasant’s charged as much as $5 ($136) for a dozen shirts and made upward of $4,000 ($80,000) a year in profits, making a laundry a surprisingly good investment.

IN 1870, PLEASANT TOOK IN A POLITICIAN AND MERCHANT NAMED Newton Booth as a boarder. Booth was tall with a slight build that would have made him look frail had it not been for his broad chest and shoulders. He had a serious face with a thick goatee and mustache and heavy-lidded eyes. His dark hair was receding, and he kept it slicked back. He was an intellectual and seemed to always be deep in contemplation. In Pleasant’s parlor, he mused about the future of America, praising the charity of the rich and the innovation of its inventors, while lamenting that greed was causing the fruits of its prosperity to be distributed unequally. Pleasant was smitten with Booth. “I consider him to be the greatest intellect California ever produced,” she said.

While boarding with Pleasant, Booth decided to run for governor of California against the Democratic incumbent, Henry Huntly Haight. Setting out from Pleasant’s house, he canvassed the state, spreading his visions of economic fairness and societal improvement. “It is strange that, in a country where there are hundreds of millions of acres of unsettled land; in an age when mechanical inventions have tenfold increased the power of production, daily bread and comfortable homes should not be easily within the reach of all,” he declared. His speeches resonated with a population that had largely missed the prosperity of the gold and silver rushes and watched barons build mansions in the hills, while they struggled to get by. In 1871, Booth won the election.

After his victory, Pleasant threw Booth a celebration party at her house. She hired musicians and prepared a gourmet feast with champagne toasts for the occasion. Pleasant and Booth made a grand entrance together, arriving in Pleasant’s horse-drawn carriage. They emerged from the carriage arm in arm and entered the party together. When Pleasant greeted her guests, she held Booth by the elbow, telling them, with a wide grin, “This is Governor Booth, who has been elected from my house.”

As Pleasant’s prospects were soaring, JJ fell ill. He was diagnosed with diabetes, which at the time was a terminal illness. The disease was still a mystery to doctors, and there were no treatments available other than special diets, which had varying effectiveness. Some doctors recommended fasting, others a diet of all meat and dairy products or all oatmeal. At best those special diets could delay death by only a few years.

Pleasant’s streetcar case and her friendship with the new governor in California brought her fame within San Francisco’s small African American community. African Americans began to seek her out for help at her boardinghouse on Washington Street. Her kitchen took up almost the entire back half of the house. Inside she had three ovens that she kept stuffed with turkeys, ducks, and cakes. Dozens of workers, preparing legs of ham, kneading dough for bread, and mixing cake batter buzzed around her. Visitors entered the kitchen through a back door, where she took deliveries of beer and dry goods. Many came to ask for help. Pleasant was known among African Americans and women in San Francisco as a woman who could get things done. She had the money and connections to solve most problems and opened her kitchen to those seeking aid. Her kitchen came to be known in San Francisco as “Black City Hall.” Some needed money, others housing, or a job. Women of all races came seeking help finding a husband or getting a divorce. Once she finished preparing dinner, she would go to work to find those who came for help what they needed.

IN THE EARLY 1870S PLEASANT BEGAN CONSTRUCTION ON A MANSION. It sat on a two-acre lot on a hill in a well-to-do section of the city, west of the financial district, at 1660 Octavia Street. The main house of the estate was designed in an Italian style, with a low-pitched roof and a white-stone exterior. The back of the house had views of the bay and a winding staircase that climbed three floors and led to more than thirty rooms.

The hub of the house was the kitchen. It now became the new “Black City Hall.” There she received emancipated slaves who had migrated to San Francisco, trained them as domestics, and placed them in jobs. She counseled young women and African Americans who were in legal trouble and gave them money for legal fees. She also provided start-up capital for African Americans who wanted to start businesses. Pleasant gave the loans in exchange for collecting a monthly cash royalty, adding even more streams of revenue from other saloons, laundries, and boardinghouses. When the mansion was completed, Pleasant took in an acquaintance, Thomas Bell, as a boarder. He was the director of two railroad companies, one in Nevada and one in California. He was a trustee in the Union Mill and Mining Company and a director of the Bank of California. Bell was a Scotsman; he had dark hair that was thinning on the top, a long, straight nose, and a thick mustache that drooped over his lips.

Bell and Pleasant began investing their money together after he moved into her home. They bought up stock in Nevada mining companies. Their bet paid dividends when Nevada entered a silver boom, after large deposits of silver were found in the state’s mountains. Their profits from these investments made Bell even richer, and made Pleasant a millionaire in her own right. The two entrepreneurs kept the equity details of their investment between them. However, their close relationship, cohabitation, and secrecy created speculation that they were not just partners but lovers.

To deter the rumors, that year Pleasant set up Bell with a wife. Bell was fifty-three years old and was sharing a bachelor pad with another millionaire in San Francisco. He had several illegitimate children and was a reputed womanizer. Pleasant introduced him to a friend of hers, a young woman from Massachusetts named Teresa Clingan. The two were married within months of their meeting. Pleasant planned and catered the wedding.

Shortly after the Bells’ wedding, JJ passed away from diabetes. His death was followed by Lizzie’s, who died suddenly, reportedly from alcohol abuse. Inside her mansion, Pleasant found herself widowed again. After their nuptials, the Bells moved into her house as a couple. Pleasant befriended Bell’s younger wife as she had Lisette Woodworth. With JJ gone, it seemed the Bells were all she had now.