The Woman Who Would Not Step Aside

<p>Before Rosa Parks before Ida B. Wells before the civil rights movement had a name one woman on the far edge of the American frontier was already fighting; and winning; her own battles for justice.</p><p>Born into bondage or servitude around 1814 and raised among abolitionists in Nantucket Mary Ellen Pleasant crossed a nation at war with itself to become one of the most powerful and misunderstood women in 19th-century America. She built an empire in Gold Rush San Francisco turned overheard secrets into fortune and quietly funded the fight for freedom; even contributing to John Brown's legendary cause.</p><p>But power came with a price. As her wealth and influence grew so did the city's fear of her. The newspapers called her Mammy Pleasant branding her a sorceress a schemer a woman who had reached too high. When her business partner Thomas Bell died in a mysterious fall society that once sought her favor turned to ruin her name.</p><p>Yet even stripped of fortune Pleasant refused to yield. She took on segregation in California's courts nearly a century before the Montgomery bus boycotts leaving behind a legacy that law rumor and prejudice could not erase.</p><p>Told with vivid detail and historical precision <em>The Woman Who Would Not Step Aside</em> traces Pleasant's rise from the margins of slavery to the heights of influence; and into the myth that still shadows her memory. Through letters court transcripts and contemporary accounts it restores her rightful place as a visionary entrepreneur a hidden abolitionist and the Mother of Civil Rights in California.</p><p>A story of brilliance and betrayal of wealth and resistance this is the life of a woman who refused to be invisible; and whose voice still echoes through the fog of San Francisco.</p><p> </p>