“I’d rather be a corpse than a coward”
Free African labour
Mary Ellen Pleasant, born half a century before slavery was abolished in 1863. Her birth was the result of the illegal extra-curricular activity of John H. Pleasants, the son of the Virginia state governor, and her mother, who was a Voodoo priestess; a descendant of the ‘Voodoo Queens’ of Santo Domingo; and above all – a slave.
Despite her upbringing and light hue she had a fierce allegiance to her own race and the plight of the slaves she’d left behind. She spurned the opportunity to go north after being freed by her owner.
Marrying James Bond
She met and married a well-to-do Bostonian called James W. Smith, the son of a black mother and a white father. He was an entrepreneur, contractor and merchant who had inherited a plantation from his father. The estate was staffed with a black workforce, all of whom had been liberated from slavery by Smith. He, like his wife, could pass for white. The illustrious Mr. and Mrs. Smith worked as spies for the famous William Lloyd Garrison’s abolitionist movement. James Smith operated as a ‘slave stealer’. He would liberate slaves from plantations and bring them back to his own estate. There they’d become part of his financial cooperative. Mary Ellen helped him run the operation.
Fugitive lost in San Francisco
Unfortunately, James died suddenly, leaving Mary Ellen alone but wealthy. During 1850, slave-catchers were known to be closing in on her, and she was forced to hide out. A scout suggested that Californian Gold Rush country would be a good place for a fugitive to get lost. A bedraggled Mary Ellen arrived in San Francisco on April 7th 1852. She arrived with $15,000 ($210,000) in gold coins. In the Gold Rush town there was almost one murder a day; 7000 drinking dens for 40,000 souls; and a 6:1 male-to-female population ratio.
The ingenious fugitive slave created two identities: Mrs. Ellen Smith, a white boarding-house cook; and Mrs. Pleasant, an entrepreneur and black abolitionist. Mary’s strategy was to harvest commercially sensitive information in the booming town of San Francisco. She used her influence to deploy her freed slaves in the houses of elite families and bachelors. The escapees got jobs; she got the information; it was leveraged in exchange for investment opportunities; money was made; and in turn more slaves were freed – a virtuous circle.
In 1874 The Cleveland Gazette wrote an article about her, saying: “She has an income from eight houses in San Francisco, a ranch near San Mateo, and $100,000 ($1,700 million) in government bonds.”
Mary Ellen amassed a fortune worth $30 million ($600 million) much of which was shared with her secret partner, Tom Bell. On January 4th 1904 the irrepressible entrepreneur extraordinaire died aged 89. She became a legend, a ghost story shared among San Franciscans and written about in local newspapers for decades after her death. She was a one-off, a ‘wonder woman’ and truly our greatest entrepreneur.
By Ron Shabazz Shillingford
Author of : The History of the World’s Greatest Entrepreneurs
you can purchace on-line: http://www.thehistoryoftheworldsgreatestentrepreneurs.com/bookslisting.php
Or via debit card: Call 0208 904 8230, Also available from Amazon and on Kindle.
