MW Mary Ellen Pleasant: I’d Rather Be a Corpse Than a Coward

What this episode covers

In today's scripted episode, Amy learns about Mary Ellen Pleasant, called the mother of San Francisco civil rights and a one-woman social agency. When the census taker passed through town for the United States Census of 1890, Mary Ellen Pleasant declared herself a “capitalist by profession” using every trick in her toolbox to amass a fortune that some estimate to have been worth thirty million dollars (in today’s money) at its peak. By some, she’s been lumped in with the “robber barons” of the San Francisco gold rush. So maybe right now you're asking yourself, “What is a self-declared capitalist like Mary Ellen Pleasant doing in the Missing Witches pantheon - this group of magical beings who use their powers to try and make the world a better place?” Well, what if I told you that Mary Ellen Pleasant used her wealth to support her community, to support the fight for abolition and women’s suffrage? And what if I told you that she studied under the New Orleans Queen of Voodoo herself, Marie Laveaux? And what if I told you that these two facts are inexorably linked? In Pleasant’s own unpublished memoir, she summed up her legacy: “You know my cause well. My cause was the cause of freedom and equality for myself and for my people and I’d rather be a corpse than a coward.”

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