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The Captain and "the Cannibal": An Epic Story of Exploration, Kidnapping, and the Broadway Stage 9780300213256
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The Captain and “the Cannibal”
NEW DIRECTIONS IN NARRATIVE HISTORY John Demos and Aaron Sachs, Series Editors The New Directions in Narrative History series includes original works of creative nonfiction across the many fields of history and related disciplines. Based on new research, the books in this series offer significant scholarly contributions while also embracing stylistic innovation as well as the classic techniques of storytelling. The works of the New Directions in Narrative History series, intended for the broadest general readership, speak to deeply human concerns about the past, present, and future of our world and its people.
The Captain and “the Cannibal” An Epic Story of Exploration, Kidnapping, and the Broadway Stage
o JAMES FAIRHEAD
New Haven & London
Published with assistance from the Louis Stern Memorial Fund. Copyright © 2015 by James Fairhead. All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, including illustrations, in any form (beyond that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law and except by reviewers for the public press), without written permiss
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The real history behind Mary Ellen Pleasant, San Francisco’s “voodoo queen”
KALW Local Public Radio, 91.7 FM
San Francisco, California
2015-09-09
Olivia Cueva & Liza Veale
In the mid-1800s, boomtown San Francisco was a city of men — only about 15 percent women. While slavery was illegal in California, white men were the ones cashing out on the boom. Mostly.
Then there was Mary Ellen Pleasant. She was one of the richest and most powerful people in the state — and she was a black woman. In fact she was a freedom fighter; her nickname was “Black City Hall.”
Yet today, Pleasant is barely remembered. The story that does get told is a mythologized tale about San Francisco’s so-called “voodoo queen.”
Why did this extraordinary woman fall from the city’s graces, left to haunt its history as the voodoo queen? We start at the last stop on a city tour called the San Francisco Ghost Hunt.
The tour brings you to the corner of Octavia and Bush streets, where Mary Ellen Pleasant’s mansion once stood. Six huge eucalyptus trees tower above the spot. Pleasant planted them herself over a hundred years ago.
Jim Fassbinder guides the tour. He tells a tale that he admits is not quite fact, not quite fiction.
He says Pleasant had power