Mary Ellen Pleasants and the Beginning of Civil Rights in California

Many of the black women who came to the western frontier are left anonymous to us.  Margaret Frank wrote in her journal somewhere in the Humboldt Sink she saw "a Negro woman tramping along through the heat and dust carrying a cast iron bake stove on her head with her provisions and a blanket piled on top...bravely pushing for California."

Although this woman's name is lost to history, through her we can see and feel her determination to reach a new life, depending on no one but herself, and overcoming the obstacles so she could make a new life for herself and her family.

Some of the black pioneer women we do know about.  Mary Ellen Pleasants came to San Francisco in 1849.  Born a slave in Georgia, she was married to a free black man in Boston and came west with a sizeable fortune.  In 1858, she traveled all the way back to eastern Canada in order to deliver $30,000 personally to John Brown to help his crusade to free her people.

Upon returning to California, she was taken off a San Francisco streetcar.  She filed suit and along with other black women, eventually compelled streetcar lines to allow Negroes to ride.  100 years before Rosa Parks...

Mary became know as "Mammy" Pleasants, the "Mother of Civil Rights in California".

Next Time...Clara Brown

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On this Day in Pioneer History:  On June 18, 1847, Alexander Murray, an experienced fur trader and wilderness explorer,  leads a heavily armed party into the Yukon River region of North America, to build a fort for trading furs with the local Indians.