“Feminist, Gun-Toting Abolitionist with a Bankroll”: the Black Radical Philanthropy of Mary Ellen Pleasant

Abstract

Abstract This article posits that philanthropy, most often identified with wealthy white American businessmen along the lines of Andrew Carnegie, has an alternative history whose central figures were black female liberators like Mary Ellen Pleasant, the “Mother of Civil Rights in California” who donated $30,000 to fund the Raid on Harper’s Ferry in 1859. Pleasant’s story subverts standard masculinist and implicitly white accounts of American philanthropy, envisioning underground financing by black proto-feminists as a radical tool for black emancipation in the Americas.