Hidden San Francisco Stop D1 Underground Railroad
Channel: Chris Carlsson
Date: 2020-07-09

In February 2020, Pluto Press published Hidden San Francisco: The Guide to Lost Landscapes, Unsung Heroes, and Radical Histories by Chris Carlsson. This video is the second of a baker's dozen of "stops" (there are 85 "stops" in four themed chapters, and an additional 44 "stops" in five walking tours in the appendix) turned into short videos. I hope it will whet your appetite for both buying the book (available at http://www.chriscarlsson.com/hidden-san-francisco-the-book/) but more importantly for going out into San Francisco and peeling back the layers of histories to find out how the hell it turned out like this!


In this 2nd installment, early African Americans in California, either fugitives or newly self-emancipated, faced a harsh legal environment. One cause celebre of the late 1850s was the case of Archy Lee. Meanwhile, Mary Ellen Pleasant was a conductor of the western terminus of the Underground Railroad in San Francisco!