{"id":56282,"date":"2018-04-24T02:04:16","date_gmt":"2018-04-24T02:04:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=56282"},"modified":"2018-04-24T02:35:52","modified_gmt":"2018-04-24T02:35:52","slug":"the-real-history-behind-mary-ellen-pleasant-san-franciscos-voodoo-queen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=56282","title":{"rendered":"The real history behind Mary Ellen Pleasant, San Francisco’s “voodoo queen”"},"content":{"rendered":"

The real history behind Mary Ellen Pleasant, San Francisco’s “voodoo queen”<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

KALW Local Public Radio, 91.7 FM<\/a>
\nSan Francisco, California
\n2015-09-09<\/p>\n

Olivia Cueva<\/strong><\/a> & Liza Veale<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/a>
\nPerformer Susheel Bibbs<\/a> poses in front of an image of Mary Ellen Pleasant<\/a>.
\nPhotograph by Olivia Cueva<\/em><\/small><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

In the mid-1800s, boomtown San Francisco<\/a> was a city of men \u2014 only about 15 percent women. While slavery was illegal in California, white men were the ones cashing out on the boom. Mostly.<\/p>\n

Then there was Mary Ellen Pleasant<\/a>. She was one of the richest and most powerful people in the state \u2014 and she was a black woman. In fact she was a freedom fighter; her nickname was “Black City Hall.”<\/p>\n

Yet today, Pleasant is barely remembered. The story that does get told is a mythologized tale about San Francisco\u2019s so-called “voodoo queen.”<\/p>\n

Why did this extraordinary woman fall from the city\u2019s graces, left to haunt its history as the voodoo queen? We start at the last stop on a city tour called the San Francisco Ghost Hunt<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The tour brings you to the corner of Octavia and Bush streets, where Mary Ellen Pleasant\u2019s mansion once stood. Six huge eucalyptus trees tower above the spot. Pleasant planted them herself over a hundred years ago.<\/p>\n

Jim Fassbinder<\/a> guides the tour. He tells a tale that he admits is not quite fact, not quite fiction.<\/p>\n

He says Pleasant had power over San Franciscans because she practiced \u201cvoodoo<\/a>.\u201d He says some claim she was responsible for the death of four people, including her longtime business partner. Rumor has it her servant \u201cfound Mary Ellen pulling apart the bones of his head and picking out bits of his brain,\u201d says Fassbinder.<\/p>\n

As the story goes, she\u2019s haunted this corner ever since the day she died. But the story\u2019s been mangled by history. What really happened?<\/p>\n

\u201cIt still is a mystery,\u201d says Susheel Bibbs<\/a>, \u201cHer life is still a mystery.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bibbs has been studying Pleasant for over 20 years. She says part of the reason it\u2019s so hard to distinguish fact from fiction is because Pleasant herself never kept her story straight.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was ingrained from the very beginning that survival meant that you don\u2019t tell. You just keep secrets,\u201d Bibbs says.<\/p>\n

By best accounts, Pleasant was born on a plantation in Georgia<\/a>. Once she was freed as a young girl, she began falsifying her identity. Slavery was still alive and well, so she needed to protect herself from law enforcement.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf they decided she was an escaped slave and she had no freedom papers, they could just wrest her off the streets and back into slavery,” Bibbs says.<\/p>\n

Her skin was fair enough to pass<\/a>, so when she docked in San Francisco in 1852, she arrived as a white woman<\/a>…<\/p>\n

Read entire story here<\/a>. Listen to the story (00:08:37) here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Then there was Mary Ellen Pleasant. She was one of the richest and most powerful people in the state \u2014 and she was a black woman. In fact she was a freedom fighter; her nickname was “Black City Hall.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,2850,1245,459,8,6462,6940,20,25],"tags":[455,28539,28541,28540,28543,28549,28537,28542,9568,28536,28538],"class_list":["post-56282","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-audio","category-biography","category-history","category-media-archive","category-passing-2","category-slavery","category-usa","category-women","tag-california","tag-jim-fassbinder","tag-kalw","tag-kalw-local-public-radio","tag-liza-veale","tag-mammy-pleasant","tag-mary-ellen-pleasant","tag-olivia-cueva","tag-san-francisco","tag-susheel-bibbs","tag-voodoo-queen"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56282","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=56282"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56282\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":56284,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56282\/revisions\/56284"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=56282"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=56282"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=56282"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}