March 2022
Near the corner of Bush and Octavia Streets
The Plaque Reads
MARY ELLEN PLEASANT MEMORIAL PARK
MOTHER OF
CIVIL RIGHTS
IN CALIFORNIA
SHE SUPPORTED THE
WESTERN TERMINUS OF THE
UNDERGROUND RAILWAY FOR
FUGITIVE SLAVES 1850-1865. THIS
LEGENDARY PIONEER ONCE
LIVED ON THIS SITE
AND PLANTED THESE
SIX TREES
PLACE BY THE SAN FRANCISCO
AFRICAN AMERICAN HISTORICAL
AND CULTURAL
SOCIETY
1814 – 1904
Mary Pleasant was an amazing woman. She was perhaps the most powerful Black woman in Gold Rush-era San Francisco. Little is known of her life before 1820, by then she was living in New England and working to help with the Underground Railroad. Here she met her first husband, James Smith, who upon his death, left her with a large inheritance.
Mary Pleasant remarried in 1848 and set sail for San Francisco in 1852. She was a savvy businesswoman and invested in many things including laundries and boardinghouses (staffed by mostly Black individuals). She owned properties in San Francisco, Oakland and even Canada. In the 1890 census, she listed her profession as “capitalist.”
She generously donated to causes she felt important and was also a crusader for rights. After a streetcar driver refused to stop for her—even though there was room in the car and she already possessed tickets—she sued the streetcar company for denying service to Black citizens. The case went all the way to the California Supreme Court, which declared segregation on streetcars to be unconstitutional.
There are few records of Pleasant’s life, although it is thought she was an ardent abolitionist and supporter of the Underground Railroad in San Francisco as well as the East Coast. Near the end of her life, she told a reporter that she helped fund the militant abolitionist John Brown’s 1859 raid on a federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia.
She died embroiled in scandal due to her financial investments with a Scotsman, but her life was rich, and she was definitely the first black self made millionaire.
Pleasant died on January 11, 1904, and was interred at Tulocay Cemetery in Napa, California. At her request, her tombstone describes her as “a friend of John Brown.”
Her former mansion was demolished and has been replaced by the Mary Ellen Pleasant Memorial Park.
The trees that the plaque refers to, and the park itself, are 6 Eucalyptus Trees she planted just before her death.
The Eucalyptus trees planted by Pleasant right before her death in 1904. The trees were designated a Structure of Merit by the City of San Francisco in 1974.
The plaque was installed by the San Francisco African-American Historical and Cultural Society