On this day in...... 1904, Mary Ellen Pleasant (right) died in San Francisco, California, in nearly her 90th year of life (her exact birth year is uncertain). She claimed to have been "born a slave to a Voodoo priestess and the youngest son of a Governor of Virginia." As a preteen she made her way to Massachusetts, where she finished a bond contract and "became a family member and lifelong friend" in a family committed to the abolition of slavery. Pleasant aided escaping slaves on the Underground Railroad. She moved in the mid-19th C. to San Francisco, where she filed a lawsuit, Pleasant v. North Beach & Mission Railroad Company, which resulted in an 1867 California Supreme Court decision outlawing segregation on the city's public vehicles. For this she's called on her gravestone the "Mother of Civil Rights in California."
(Prior January 4 posts are here and here.)
