By Steve Simmons – Published at 12:56, March 25, 2021
A lot of people don’t know the story of Mary Ellen Pleasant, the first African American female millionaire, an abolitionist who worked with the Underground Railroad, a champion who sued for the right of her people to ride the trolley cars in San Francisco, and who earned the name of “Mother of Civil Rights in California.”
Beverly Hills-based theatre company Theatre 40 is working to rectify that with a reading of Sharon L Graine’s play, House on the Hill: Mary Ellen Pleasant’s Story at 7 p.m., Saturday, March 27. To access the free Zoom event, visit https://us02web.zoom.us/j/85847463377.
The cast will feature Theatre 40 company members Alison Blanchard as Teresa Bell, Pleasant’s protégé; Kevin Dulude, as Pleasant’s longtime business partner, Thomas Bell, plus husband and wife, Chester A. Graine III, as the servant William and Sharon L. Graine, who also directs, as Pleasant. Sylvia Boyd, who’s appeared in Graine’s play about singer Marian Anderson, will provide narration and stage directions.
Dulude, who’s performed the piece numerous times across the state as part of Graine’s Playhouse Theatre Players, thought the play would be a good fit for Theatre 40, where he appeared in Fifteen Men In A Smoke-Filled Room and Taming The Lion. “This play came to mind,” Dulude says. “The characters’ reminiscences are like monologues and perfect for Zoom that is basically boxes of people.” So, he brought the idea to Theatre 40 Artistic Director David Stafford who agreed it was a good match and perfect for Women’s History Month. “This is a fascinating story that needs to be told,” Dulude says.
Graine’s play follows Pleasant’s mysterious and fascinating life. Her Civil War-era journey from a life of enslavement on a Georgia plantation took her to San Francisco where she found work as a housekeeper for prominent merchants. Overhearing conversations between the rich and powerful provided free financial advice and she learned where they invested so she could put her inheritance money there too. She engaged a young clerk, Scotsman Thomas Bell, and they began to make money based on her tips and guidance. Thomas made money of his own, especially in quicksilver, and by 1875 they had amassed a $30 million fortune. Her portfolio grew to include shares in businesses that ranged from dairies and laundries to Wells Fargo Bank, and she owned restaurants and boarding houses.
Dulude and Graine even presented the play at Beltane Ranch, near Glen Ellen in the Sonoma Valley, a property Pleasant once owned.
In the play, when she comes to the back to see Thomas Bell, “she’s his first client,” says Dulude, “and he’s about to give her advice and she tells him, ‘I didn’t come for advice,’ and she tells him what to do. He reports that ‘she was never wrong.’” Graine’s play goes on to explore their unique arrangement.
She groomed Teresa, her protégé, to be like her and meet with white men for financial counsel, says Dulude. “In the play Teresa mentions Mary Ellen had charisma and from the moment they met, she was intrigued by her. She says, ‘There was something about her eyes and you had to listen to her, she drew people in.’”
Pleasant arranged for her to marry Thomas and they all lived together in a 30-room mansion at 1661 Octavia St.
In 1974, the city of San Francisco designated six eucalyptus trees that Pleasant had planted outside her mansion at the southwest corner of Octavia and Bush streets as a Structure of Merit. The trees and associated plaque presented by the San Francisco African American Historical & Cultural Society are now known as Mary Ellen Pleasant Memorial Park, the smallest park in San Francisco.
Telling The Story
The play is the result of a friendship between Graine and Mayme Agnew Clayton (she died in 2006), a librarian and founder of the Western States Black Research and Education Center, formerly housed at the Mayme A, Clayton Library & Museum in Culver City.
A member of the Dramatists Guild of America and a recipient of the Women In Theatre Red Carpet Award, Graine’s previous plays include Dorothy and Otto: The Dorothy Dandridge Affair and Hattie McDaniel- Let Me In. Dulude has performed her Inside Vincent Price: The Man Inside the Man at libraries across the Southland.
According to Dulude, when Graine was working on the play, Clayton gave her material to inspire her including two books, Mammy Pleasant and Mammy Pleasant’s Partner by Helen Holdredge. “So, she discovered the history that not many people know about,” says Dulude. She noted that the much more well-known African American entrepreneur, philanthropist and political and social activist Madame C.J. Walker, recorded as the first female self-made millionaire in America, was 5 years old when Pleasant had her fortune.
There are several reasons, Pleasant hasn’t found her place in history, Dulude says. “She died penniless, and she had a lot of enemies who besmirched her name. She was accused of running bordellos and putting hexes on people as a ‘voodoo queen.’’’
Dulude describes the play as “an historical drama with a gothic vibe,” because of its time period and the mysterious subject matter. To the public, voodoo meant blood magic and malevolent intent, to Pleasant, allegedly the daughter and granddaughter of a voodoo priestesses, the real voodoo was actually the religion from her ancestral homeland. In the staged version, the topic comes in a dark scene with the characters holding candles.
“She lost her fortune taking the wrong person to court and attended an event at the invitation of some of her white clients that caused a huge scandal,” reports Dulude. “She was accused of behaving above her station.”
Dealing with such a colorful, historic life, much material is edited to fit the hour-plus program. “When Sharon wrote the play,” says Dulude, “she knew there was a lot more to it. But she wants to inspire people to do their own investigation.”
Leaving A Legacy
“I like the story, it’s important and needs to be heard,” says Dulude. The roots of Pleasant’s activism began at a young age. At 10, she worked as a domestic servant for an abolitionist Quaker family in Nantucket. She went to meetings and met many prominent abolitionists learned about the Underground Railroad. She later married James Smith, a wealthy former plantation owner and abolitionist and the couple carried on the work. After Smith’s death four years later, Pleasant continued as a conductor.
Dulude likes the message of someone who in a dangerous time, did so much to help others. “She didn’t have to do it and it was courageous. And that’s the story of a lot of heroes in history.”
Pleasant used every tool at her disposal (both legal and extra-legal) to elevate herself, her protégés, and many escaped slaves she placed in homes to be her eyes and ears. Acquainted with abolitionist John Brown, she provided $30,000 to finance his “army of emancipation” and secretly traveled to the Eastern Seaboard to rally slaves to Brown’s militant cause. Sixty years after her death, her gravestone was amended with a line that she had asked for on her deathbed: “A Friend of John Brown.” As Pleasant herself once said, “I’d rather be a corpse than a coward.”
To see the show trailer, visit https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1qTbCTQxgf0.
