Ghost of a Legend: How a San Francisco Civil Rights Icon Was Made a Monster

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Carly Severn

Oct 10, 2024

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This story first published online and aired on “Bay Curious” on Oct 25, 2018.

View the full episode transcript.

“What are the most haunted places in San Francisco?”

That’s the question that Bay Curious listener Kelsey Poole asked us a few weeks ago. Which is how I found myself standing with her on the steep streets of San Francisco’s Pacific Heights neighborhood as the sun went down — on the San Francisco Ghost Hunt.

Christian Cagigal leading the San Francisco Ghost Hunt through Pacific Heights (Anne Wernikoff/KQED)

A Tennessee transplant to the Bay Area, Poole is actually already a fan of going on ghost tours when she travels, as a way to learn the history of a city she’s visiting — plus “you get some spooky stories that keep you up at night,” she says. But she’d never done one in San Francisco. (Want to go on a ghost hunt with the Bay Curious team on Nov. 1? Details and tickets here!)

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The Ghost Hunt tour is led by performer Christian Cagigal, who leads us through these streets in full 19th century dress, top hat and clacking cane. From tales of ghostly apparitions to aristocrats meeting grisly ends, every corner brings another ghoulish story from San Francisco history.

Bay Curious listener Kelsey Poole (Anne Wernikoff / KQED)

There’s one stop on this tour we discovered, however, that tells a real-life story bigger than any Halloween legend: at the corner of Octavia and Bush streets, the place known as Mary Ellen Pleasant Memorial Park.

The ghost of Mary Ellen Pleasant — a 19th century entrepreneur who once lived in a now-vanished mansion nearby, and actually planted the eucalyptus trees above our heads — is said to still haunt this unlit corner. Her spirit is said to summon chills, frighten dogs and even throw eucalyptus nuts at passers-by. (For the record, we escaped unscathed that night.)

Christian Cagigal holds up a photograph of 19th century San Francisco on his Ghost Hunt tour, at Mary Ellen Memorial Park (Anne Wernikoff)

Pleasant, Cagigal tells us, was born into slavery in the South and came to San Francisco in the mid-1800s — defying white society’s constraints to not only amass great wealth, but to use her power to advance the cause of civil rights in the city.

Photograph of Mary Ellen Pleasant, age 87. (Courtesy San Francisco Public Library History Center)

Yet she was also described as a witch, a “voodoo queen” and even a murderer. What’s real here?

“Her life is so enshrouded in mystery because she was her own spin doctor,” says Sacramento writer and performer Susheel Bibbs, who has studied Pleasant’s story for decades. Pleasant wrote three autobiographies — but each one contradicts the other on basic facts, such as the year of her birth.

We do know that she was born in Georgia, and was raised in Nantucket, Massachusetts, “in indenture,” says Bibbs. There on the East Coast, the young Pleasant became a crucial figure in the civil rights fight, secretly teaming up with abolitionists and rescuing escaped slaves on the Underground Railroad.

Her double life actually including presenting as a white woman when she could.

“She was very used to being covert,” Bibbs says.

The death of her first husband left her rich, and she arrived in San Francisco in 1852 — still passing as white. She invested this sizable fortune in property by establishing boardinghouses and laundries: services that a town full of prospectors relied on.

Sacramento writer and performer Susheel Bibbs (Carly Severn / KQED)

In these spaces, she learned the private secrets of powerful men, and used them as another kind of currency, to rise in society. While wealthy white people of San Francisco knew her as the white boardinghouse proprietress, the city’s growing black community knew her real identity.

To them, she was known as “The Black City Hall,” who brought the Underground Railroad to the West and helped black people find employment. And almost a century before Rosa Parks, Pleasant challenged San Francisco’s segregated transit system in court, winning black people the right to ride the streetcars.

“My cause,” Pleasant wrote in one of her memoirs, “was the cause of freedom and equality for myself and for my people. And I’d rather be a corpse than a coward.”

Mary Ellen Pleasant pictured in the San Francisco Chronicle in 1899 (Courtesy San Francisco Chronicle)

After the Civil War, over a decade after she arrived in the city, Pleasant finally checked the box that said “Black” on the census of 1865. While this undoubtedly caused a stir, Pleasant continued to move in wealthy white circles.

But by the 1880s, the wild, mud-caked San Francisco that Mary Ellen Pleasant the capitalist had carved her way into had itself transformed into a “very much more overtly racist” city, says Bibbs.

Across the nation, emancipated slaves became a convenient scapegoat for the economy’s woes — and as a wealthy, older black woman, Pleasant now inspired suspicion, even fear. The press coined a racist nickname: “Mammy Pleasant.”

Whispers grew that she had some otherworldly hold over the wealthy white people she was close to — especially when Pleasant became entangled in the scandalous 1883 trial of Nevada Sen. William Sharon, accused of seducing and then abandoning a young woman.

“It was like the O.J. Simpson trial” in notoriety, says Bibbs.

The crowd listens to Christian Cagigal telling the story of Mary Ellen Pleasant on the San Francisco Ghost Hunt tour (Anne Wernikoff / KQED)

Lawyers for Sharon claimed that Pleasant, as the young woman’s friend, had used dark forces to manipulate her into entrapping the senator. And rather than rejecting the rumors, she defied them — encouraged them. She carried a voodoo doll in court, claiming she would use it to bring about his death. Wild thing is, he soon did die during the trial.

Pleasant’s status as a “voodoo queen” grew, cementing her reputation as a quasi-mystical figure in San Francisco. To the public, voodoo meant blood magic and malevolent intent.

To Mary Ellen Pleasant, however, the real voodoo — vodoun, or vodun — was actually her religion from her ancestral homeland of Haiti, says Bibbs.

Scandal followed scandal. When her business partner, a Scotsman named Thomas Bell, was found dead in Pleasant’s mansion in 1899, his widow collaborated on a full-page smear piece in the San Francisco Chronicle with the headline “The Queen of the Voodoos.”

The “Queen of the Voodoos” article about Mary Ellen Pleasant in the San Francisco Chronicle (Courtesy San Francisco Chronicle )

The press had used the language of the supernatural to describe her for years — but now, they made her into a flat-out monster, accusing her of witchcraft and heavily implying she murdered Bell.

It’s telling who gets a legend — and who gets a ghost story. Mary Ellen Pleasant was demonized in her own lifetime. Yet in a system so loaded against a black woman in the public eye, playing with rumor, as she did, was perhaps the only way to play the game — even if it was ultimately her undoing.

She died in 1904, in her 90s, and her obituary in the San Francisco Examiner was titled: “Mammy Pleasant Will Work Weird Spells No More.”

How we’re remembered depends on who’s telling your story. And with such varying accounts, “one could not tell who she was,” says Bibbs. “Was she the … mother of civil rights, or was she a murderess?”

The San Francisco Ghost Hunt concludes in Room 407 — rumored to be haunted — of the Hotel Majestic in Pacific Heights (Anne Wernikoff / KQED)

Or as Christian Cagigal put it in closing on the San Francisco Ghost Hunt, under those eucalyptus trees she’s said to haunt: “When there’s three versions of your life story. We don’t know what to do with your life story…. And we forget your story.”

He keeps Mary Ellen Pleasant on his ghost hunt, he says, “so we might start to remember.”

Episode Transcript

Olivia Allen-Price: The nights are getting longer. Pumpkins are popping up on doorsteps all over town. And soon ghoulish trick or treaters may be knocking at your door. Today on Bay Curious, we’ve got a treat for you to kick off spooky season, all inspired by this question from a listener.

Kelsey Poole: Hi, I’m Kelsey Poole and my question is, what are the most haunted places in San Francisco?

Olivia Allen-Price: We sent Kelsey on a San Francisco Ghost Hunt tour to learn the haunted side of the city’s history.

Kelsey Poole: It’s a cool way to see the city and you get some spooky stories that keep you up at night.

Olivia Allen-Price: But what we didn’t expect to find on the tour was the real life story that would shake us the most. Something not found in many San Francisco history books. Something more significant than any Halloween legend.

Olivia Allen-Price: I’m Olivia Allen-Price, this is Bay Curious. Today we’re bringing back a story we first aired in 2018 about a crusading heroine who somehow became a demon in her own lifetime. That’s all just ahead.

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Olivia Allen-Price: Bay Curious reporter Carly Seven went along with Kelsey on the ghost tour and brings us the tale.

Christian Cagigal: Alright ghost hunters. Gather ‘round, gather ‘round.

Carly Severn: The San Francisco Ghost Hunt starts at dusk in the city’s Pacific Heights neighborhood in the shadow of those looming Victorians.

Christian Cagigal: Hello and welcome to the San Francisco Ghost Hunt walking tour. Thank you.

Carly Severn: Actor Christian Cagigal leads us around the steep streets in full 19th century dress – top hat and clacking cane. Every corner brings another ghoulish story from San Francisco history, from ghostly apparitions to an aristocrat who disappeared under grisly circumstances.

Christian Cagigal: Windows and doors were said to slam shut throughout the entire house, as inside, they discovered the pickled body of George Atherton.

Carly Severn: But on one particularly dark street corner, our guide Christian places his flickering lantern down on the sidewalk to illuminate a large circular plaque under our feet, dedicated to a woman who lived and died here over a century ago.

Christian Cagigal: She was said to be worth $30 million. For anybody, anytime, that is an accomplishment. For a woman in the Victorian time, quite an accomplishment. For an African-American woman, for that time, almost unheard of. Almost. This, my friends, is Miss Mary Ellen Pleasant.

Carly Severn: The excitable crowd on this tour has come to be scared. But sometimes Christian says they get more than they bargained for. Mary’s ghost is said to summon chills, frighten dogs, even throw nuts from the nearby eucalyptus trees at people like us.

Christian Cagigal: Not on your head. From behind … on your back.

Carly Severn: After the crowds disperse into the night, I wondered: why would the soul still be so restless? I wanted to learn more about the flesh and blood Mary. And there’s one person who knows her better than most, Sacramento writer Susheel Bibbs.

Susheel Bibbs: Her life is so enshrouded in mystery because she was her own spin doctor.

Carly Severn: Mary wrote three autobiographies, but each one contradicts the other. Here’s what we do know about her.

Susheel Bibbs: She was born a slave in Georgia. She was raised in Nantucket in indenture.

Carly Severn: There on the East Coast, years before she came to San Francisco, Mary was a crucial figure in the civil rights fight, secretly teaming up with abolitionists and rescuing escaped slaves on the Underground Railroad. In this world, nothing could ever be as it seemed.

Susheel Bibbs: She was very used to being covert, and she often said that words were made to conceal feelings and that she was good at it.

Carly Severn: And that double life included presenting as a white woman when she could. Early on, she married well, and rich. And when she was widowed, she inherited all that money.

Susheel Bibbs: $45,000 in gold from her husband’s estate.

Carly Severn: And she made the journey by steamer to San Francisco in 1852, still passing as white. She found a town filled with men come to make their gold rush fortunes. They were far from home and needed somewhere to live. So Mary buys up boarding houses and laundries.

Susheel Bibbs: All kinds of things that she thinks will be a niche in San Francisco to make more money.

Carly Severn: Thing is, Mary also did the cooking and the cleaning for these men. Why? Because you can hear secrets that way. She had the dirty laundry of influential men, literally, and she was using it as leverage to further her real cause, bringing the Underground Railroad out west. You see, only San Francisco’s growing Black community knew her as a Black woman. They called her the Black City Hall, the place where you go to get what you need.

Susheel Bibbs: She helped African Americans get jobs on steamers and in homes and in her own businesses.

Carly Severn: Not only that, almost a century before Rosa Parks, Mary Ellen Pleasant challenged the city’s segregated transit system.

Susheel Bibbs: She won in and out of court, and in 1868, African Americans could ride the trolleys in San Francisco.

Carly Severn: After the Civil War. Over a decade after she arrived in the city, Mary finally checked the box that said Black on the census of 1865. Susheel, who also performs as Mary on stage, reads from her memoirs.

Susheel Bibbs: 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.

Carly Severn: But by the 1880s, the wild mud-caked San Francisco that Mary Ellen Pleasant, the capitalist, had carved her way into, had itself transformed.

Susheel Bibbs: Very much more overtly racist.

Carly Severn: Across the nation, emancipated slaves became a convenient scapegoat for the economy’s woes. And as a wealthy, older Black woman, Mary now inspired suspicion, even fear. And that is how a heroine becomes a villain. Now, the press coined a racist nickname, Mammy Pleasant. And in 1883, she became entangled in the scandalous trial of a Nevada senator accused of seducing, then abandoning a young woman. That woman was Mary’s friend.

Susheel Bibbs: It was a trial like the O.J. Simpson trial of the 20th century and went all the way to New York and it was reported everywhere, every day.

Carly Severn: Though she wasn’t on trial, Mary was painted as a sinister crone with an otherworldly hold over the white people she was close to. But rather than rejecting the rumors, she defied them, encouraged them even, during the senator’s trial.

Susheel Bibbs: At one point, she planted a voodoo doll and said that, you know, he would die. He did die during, over the course of the trials.

Carly Severn: To Mary Ellen Pleasant, voodoo wasn’t just some scare tactic. It was, vodoun, or vodun, a belief system from her ancestral homeland of Haiti.

Susheel Bibbs: It was Pleasant’s religion from the time she was a child. She was born the daughter of a voodoo priestess and the granddaughter of a voodoo priest from Haiti.

Carly Severn: Scandal followed scandal. When her wealthy white business partner was found dead in her mansion, his widow collaborated on a full page smear piece in the San Francisco Chronicle. The headline…

Paul Lancour (reading from newspaper): The Queen of the Voodoos

Carly Severn: The press had used the language of the supernatural to describe her for years, and now they made her into a flat out monster. And the public turned on her.

Susheel Bibbs: They exploited those rumors and called her a blackmailer. They called her a baby stealer. So I would say that it was hate, revenge and racism.

Carly Severn: Pleasant died in 1904, in her 90s. After such a life, so many achievements, this was the obituary she received in the San Francisco Examiner.

Paul Lancour (reading from a newspaper): Mammy Pleasant will work weird spells no more.

Carly Severn: It’s telling who gets a legend and who gets a ghost story. How we are remembered depends on who’s telling your story. Or as our tour guide, Christian put it ,under those haunted eucalyptus trees in San Francisco …

Christian Cagigal: But when there’s three versions of your life story, we don’t know what to do with your life story. We stop telling your life story and we forget your story.

Carly Severn: He keeps Mary Ellen Pleasant on his ghost hunt, he says so that she’s not forgotten. But given Mary’s own penchant for mystery and a good story, then maybe you could choose a worse time to get to know Mary Ellen Pleasant than Halloween.

Olivia Allen-Price: Before we go, let’s check back in with Kelsey, our question asker.

Carly Severn: What do you think about the story of Mary Ellen Pleasant?

Kelsey Poole: It was really cool history I didn’t know before. But I hope she doesn’t throw a gumball at me.

Olivia Allen-Price: Reporter Carly Seven. Thanks for bringing us this story.

Olivia Allen-Price: Mark your calendars for a super fun event we have coming up. It’s a free and festive block party and open house at KQED headquarters in San Francisco’s Mission District. It’s called KQED Fest, and it’s a daylong celebration of local food, music, culture and your favorite KQED, PBS and NPR programs. Bay Curious will be live on stage talking about the statewide propositions that we recently covered in our Prop Fest series. So be sure to swing by and say hello. I’ll be there. It all goes down on October 19th. Find details and register for free at kqed.org/live.

Olivia Allen-Price: Bay Curious is made in San Francisco at member-supported KQED. Our show is produced by Amanda Font, Christopher Beale, Ana De Almeida Amaral and me, Olivia Allen-Price. Additional support from Victoria Mauleon, Jen Chien, Katie Sprenger, Maha Sanad, Holly Kernan and the whole KQED family.

Olivia Allen-Price: I’m Olivia Ellen Price, and I hope to see you at KQED Fest. Thanks for listening!

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Ghost of a Legend: How a San Francisco Civil Rights Icon Was Made a Monster

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Ghost of a Legend: How a San Francisco Civil Rights Icon Was Made a Monster

Ghost of a Legend: How a San Francisco Civil Rights Icon Was Made a Monster

Episode Transcript

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