Pleasant, Mary Ellen
1814-1904 · Contribution: 1852-1890s
Built a real estate, mining, and boardinghouse fortune in Gold Rush-era San Francisco while covertly running California's western branch of the Underground Railroad, becoming, by most accounts, the first self-made Black millionaire in American history, decades before Madam C.J. Walker
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Impact on the world
Pleasant fused capitalism and abolition, turning intelligence gathered in the homes of the wealthy into a fortune she used to fund freedom, settle Black migrants, and win a landmark desegregation ruling.
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