The mystery of Mary Ellen Pleasant - 19th-century African-American business woman - A Historical Detective Story, part 2

Ebony, Sept, 1993 by Lerone Bennett, Jr.

I AM a whole theater in myself" Mary Ellen Pleasant was speaking. She was giving notice, on the eve of battle, that she was not to be understood or defeated without bitter struggle.

All right--we have been warned. And the task before us is the task of trying to define the roles in the theater of the financier-abolitionist-feminist who dazzled San Francisco in the 1890s and who was accused, as we saw in the last installment, of committing every crime in the book.

"I am a whole theater in myself."

That means, if it means anything, that Mary Ellen Pleasant was engaged, consciously engaged, in the extraordinary enterprise of acting all the roles in a play she wrote, produced, and directed.

A formidable, no, a terrifying woman, Mary Ellen Pleasant, and the best way to begin this second installment is to show the terror she produced in others, not by voodoo, as the mythologists say, but by sheer power of being. Here is a little scene from one of her dramas.

Watch:

The great and harassed lady is going to be interviewed, or, rather, she is not going to be interviewed.

Watch:

"If a foreign prince comes to San Francisco [Miriam Michelson of the San Francisco Call wrote] your managing editor, through an influential friend, may arrange a short meeting for you . . . But tell me, ye gods of the pull, what is the magic string that will open Mammy Pleasant's door and Mammy Pleasant's lips!

"I went up the steps at 1661 Octavia Street and rang the bell and waited and . . . presently a pretty-faced lad of about 14 appeared at the door. He was gentle, even smiling, but he was delightfully firm . . . .

"I tried again a few days later.

"This time an elderly woman admitted me.

"I was so surprised at really being on the inside of that charmed door that I could only look about me in silent amaze.

"A very, very wide, generous, deep hall, with broad staircase starting halfway back, and--suddenly, from above, a deep, imperious voice:

"|Who's the lady? Who's the lady,'" it demanded.

"|I'm bringing up her card and the letters,' said the gentle, timid voice of the woman who had admitted me.

"|I can't see anybody. What's your name?'

"Up toward the undistinguished darkness I confessed my name and quality, or lack of it.

"|You were here the other day.'

"|Yes,' I admitted, like a culprit.

"|Well, I can't see you. I'm too busy. I don't want to sec anybody. if I want you, I'll send for you.'

"I laughed aloud at this. it was so unexpected; said so simply, though.

"The harsh voice softened almost imperceptibly. It bade me good-by, and repeated not so crossly.

"|If I want you, I'll send for you.'"

FROM this great height, from this fascinating image of the unknown and imperious Black woman at the top of the stairs, we descend naturally to the ground of segregation-slavery that produced her. And here we immediately run into trouble, for we don't know where this remarkable woman came from.

There are two major theories about her origin, and from time to time, depending on her aims and disposition, Mary Pleasant supported or seemed to support both. The first theory is that she was born in slavery, either in Louisiana or Virginia or Georgia. There is no hard evidence to support this theory, but there is no lack of secondary material that describes in minute detail how she grew up on a great plantation and was rescued by an improbable White planter who bought her because of her white skin--she was almost certainly brown and perhaps black--and sent her to a New Orleans convent and then on to the North. This is all very interesting, and it makes pleasant reading on rainy days, but there is no corroborative evidence.

This theory also runs full into the face of Mary Ellen Pleasant, who should have known where she was born. On at least three occasions she said that she was born not in slavery but in freedom. In 1890 she told a census-taker that she was born in Pennsylvania. In 1901 she said in her "Memoirs" that "some people have reported that I was born in slavery, but as a matter of fact I was born in Philadelphia, at number 9 Barley Street." The date, she said, was August 19, 1814.

Who were her parents?

Again, we don't know, or to be more precise, we know too much. Her father, we are told in great and contradictory detail, was either a famous White slave-owner, a Cherokee Indian, or a Kanaka.

Whoever her parents were, they soon disappeared from her life. According to her account, she was sent at an early age--she says six--to Nantucket, Mass., to live with a Quaker named Mary Hussey, who operated a huckster shop on Union Street. She said later that "when my father sent me to live with the Husseys, he also gave them . . . plenty of money to have me educated, but they did not use it for that purpose, and that's how I came to have no education."

After 14 or 15 years of growth and self-discovery and education, Mary Ellen Pleasant moved on, going, according to an 1895 interview, to Philadelphia where she married a Black man, James Henry Smith, "a foreman carpenter and contractor, who had a good business and possessed considerable means."