The making of "Mammy Pleasant"
Subtitle: a Black entrepreneur in nineteenth-century San Francisco
By: Lynn M. Hudson.
Series: Women in American history
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
Published: 2003
Place of publication: Urbana
Language: eng
Number of pages: 193
Subjects: Pleasant, Mary Ellen, 1814-1904.; African American women -- Biography.; African Americans -- Biography.; African American businesspeople -- California -- San Francisco -- Biography.; Businesswomen -- California -- San Francisco -- Biography.; African Americans -- California -- San Francisco -- History -- 19th century.; San Francisco (Calif.) -- Biography.; San Francisco (Calif.) -- History -- 19th century.; San Francisco (Calif.) -- Race relations.
Genres: Biography.
Description: "Mary Ellen Pleasant arrived in Gold Rush-era San Francisco a free black woman with abolitionist convictions and an aptitude for entrepreneurial success. Behind the convenient and innocuous disguise of a mammy, she transformed domestic labor into enterprise, amassed remarkable real estate, wealth, and power, and gained notoriety for her work in fighting Jim Crow.".

"Pleasant's legacy is steeped in scandal and lore. Was she a voodoo queen who traded in sexual secrets? A madam? A murderer? In The Making of "Mammy Pleasant," Lynn M. Hudson examines the folklore of this remarkable woman's real and imagined powers.

Emphasizing the significance of her life in the context of how it has been interpreted or ignored in American history, Hudson integrates fact and speculation culled from periodicals, court cases, diaries, letters, Pleasant's interviews with the San Francisco press, and various biographical and fictional accounts.".

"Through Pleasant's life, Hudson also interrogates the constructions of race, gender, and sexuality during the formative years of California's economy and challenges popular mythology about the freewheeling sexual culture of the American West."--BOOK JACKET.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. [163]-185) and index.
Table of contents: title: Nantucket; title: She was a friend of John Brown; title: Jim Crow San Francisco; title: A madam on trial; title: The house of mystery; title: Making mammy work for you : Mary Ellen Pleasant in popular culture.