BY MAKAYLA B. – 12 YEARS OLD
Black history month is a very important month where we acknowledge how Africans in the Americas didn’t let racial discrimination stop them from doing something big.
Black history month is very important because it highlights the fact that though they were victims of racial discriminations, they pushed themselves to show everyone that we’re all equal and no one colour or race is more important or holds a higher position then another. Though people like Viola Parks, Martin Luther King Jr., and well-known African people fought for their rights, it wasn’t only them who accomplished those things. Behind the scenes there are less well-known African figures that helped to bring some sort or equality between races.
When equality was being fought for, there were many issues and problems that needed to be solved in order for them to successfully create equality in the world. One of the individuals working behind the scenes was Mary Ellen Pleasant. Pleasant is a woman who fought for women’s rights, and won practically all of her cases that she fought in court. Not much is known about Pleasant’s parents or date of birth. There is a possibility that she could have grown up as a slave or grown up as someone who wasn’t a slave. Early in her lifetime a contract was made against her will, and she was forced to work for a shopkeeper, which in turn, she learnt the basics of running a business.
Through the shop she found out about the abolitionists and how the shopkeepers’ family were abolitionists too. James Smith, a plantation owner and flower contractor, was quite wealthy and eventually married Pleasant. In Charles Town, Virginia John Brown, one of the abolitionists, was hung on December 2nd, 1859 for murder and treason. A note was found in his pocket that said, “The axe is laid at the foot of the tree. When the first blow is struck, there will be more money to help.” No one suspected that it was Pleasant who placed the note; they thought it was some wealthy Northerner.
Pleasant sued a streetcar company because they didn’t allow African people on the streetcar, and she also sued another because they allowed segregation. Fortunately Pleasant won both cases and became very well known in the African community.
She then decided to defend a woman who had a marriage dispute and ended up losing the case, which had many negative outcomes. Thomas Bell died and stories were published saying she killed him, and had even put peoples’ households under voodoo spells. After that, her life went downhill, and in 1904 she died in poverty.
Pleasant accomplished quite a few things in her lifetime and wears the title of “The Mother of Civil Rights in California.” and would proudly wear that title if she were still here today.
