MEET MARY PLEASANT

NOLA Code:

MMEP 0000 H1

Number of Episodes/Length:

1 / 60

Genre:

Biography

Collections:

African American, Black History Month, Women's History

Rights End:

9/28/2025

Producer

C. Susheel Bibs

Presenter

KVIE Public Television

TV-G

CC

Stereo

Year Produced:

2007

Version:

Base

Meet Mary Pleasant is the daring saga of a 19th-century African-American woman, born a slave and raised in Nantucket, who became an international abolitionist, a prosperous entrepreneur, and a civil-rights activist whose work helped alter modern-day civil-rights law. Now called “The Mother of Civil Rights in California,” Pleasant--as activist and individual--was a Martin Luther King, a Malcolm X, and a Rosa Parks combined; she could love across boundaries of race and class while fighting for racial equality, human rights, and dignity for her people. Her life thus can be important today in healing our divisions as a people.