Mary Ellen Pleasant (born 19 August ?1814-1817 - died 4 January 1904) was a 19th Century female entrepreneur of partial African descent widely known as Mammy Pleasant, who used her fortune to further the abolitionist movement. She worked on the Underground Railroad across many states and then helped bring it to California during the Gold Rush Era. She was a friend and financial supporter of John Brown and well known in abolitionist circles. After the Civil War she took her battles to the courts in the 1860s, and won several civil rights victories, one of which was cited and upheld in the 1980s and resulted in her being called “The Mother of Human Rights in California”.
Read more about Mary Ellen Pleasant: Early Years, Prominence, Career and Marriages, San Francisco Court Case, 1866, Scandals and Smears, 1884-1954, Rediscovery
Famous quotes containing the words mary, ellen and/or pleasant:
“The first general store opened on the ‘Cold Saturday’ of the winter of 1833 ... Mrs. Mary Miller, daughter of the store’s promoter, recorded in a letter: ‘Chickens and birds fell dead from their roosts, cows ran bellowing through the streets’; but she failed to state what effect the freeze had on the gala occasion of the store opening.”
—Administration in the State of Sout, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“Party action should follow, not precede the creation of a dominant popular sentiment.”
—J. Ellen Foster (1840–1910)
“It is most pleasant to commit a just action which is disagreeable to someone whom one does not like.”
—Victor Hugo (1802–1885)