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Meet Mary Pleasant

Mary Ellen Pleasant
Unknown authorUnknown author, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Mary Ellen Pleasant

Tuesday, Oct. 4, 2022 at 11 p.m. on KPBS TV

"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.

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Meet Mary Pleasant

A DVD copy is available for purchase on the film website.

Producer: C. Susheel Bibs. Presented by KVIE Public Television. 2007

A big decision awaits some voters this July as the race for San Diego County’s Supervisor District 1 seat heats up. Are you ready to vote? Check out the KPBS Voter Hub to learn about the candidates, the key issues the board is facing and how you can make your voice heard.