The San Francisco Examiner from San Francisco, California • 14

1968 East Bay Mil Page 1 6 Electric Sign Firms Struck S. F. Slave Won Freedom, Riches raid on Harper's Ferry and i she had made her first initial look like a had been captured CALIF. XEGllO HISTORY By HARRY JOIIAXESEN Not all the soutlierners who headed for California with "Mrs. Pleasant always blamed John Brown for hastening his attack at Harper's their Negro slaves in the Ferry, which she claimed cost industry now get $6.93 an hour in wages and fringe benefits.

Hourly pay differs. Involved in the strike are International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 6 here and three others, Sheet Metal Workers Local 104 here and two others and Sign Painters Locals 510 here and 878 in Oakland. With Strike in Lumber Yards Major lumber yards in Alameda and Contra Costa Counties are shut down by a strike-lockout. Clerks and Lumber Handlers Local 939 last week struck 15 yards represented by the Lumber Mill Em-p 1 Association. Eighteen other yards, also represented by the association, locked out these workers yesterday on grounds "a strike against one is a strike against all." About 200 members of the local are idle as well as several hundred other workers who the picket lines.

Wages, fringe benefits and working conditions are the Six Eay Area ellctric sign companies were shut down today by a strike of electricians, sheet metal workers and painters. More than 100 employes walked out yesterday in San Francisco, San Mateo, Alameda and Contra Costa counties. The unions asked a 10 percent increase in wages and fringe benefits each year for three, years. The Northern California Electric Adversit-ing Association, representing the struck firms, offered to renew the present contract. A employer spokesman said this was done because they must meet manufacturing competition outside the Bay Area with a gross labor cost of about $2 less an hour.

Bay Area employes in the "Learning that the authorities were in pursuit of Brown's accomplice, Mrs. Pleasant immediately fled to New York and, after remaining in hiding for some time, assumed another name and made her way back to California. "When Brown was captured, there was found on his person a letter reading: 'The ax is laid at the root of the tree. When the first blow is struck, there will be more money to The message was signed "For months the authorities vainly searched for the author of the message. In later years it developed that Mrs.

Pleasant had written draft exchanged for Canadian paper, which she converted into coin and finally turned over to Brown. "After a conference in Canada, it was agreed between them that he should not strike a blow for the freedom of the Negro until she had journeyed to the South and had aroused the feelings of rebellion among her people. "Disguised as a jockey, she proceeded to the South, and was engaged in her part of the plot when she was startled by the news that her in all over 40,000. Mammy Pleasant, unlike George Dennis, died poor. She had lived for years in the home of quicksilver tycoon Thomas Eell at Bush and Oc-tavia Streets, but Bell did not remember her in his will.

Her grave in the Tucolay Cemetery in Napa is visited annually by members of the San Francisco Historical and Cultural Society. The headstone identifies Mammy Pleasant as: "Mother of Civil Rights in California. Friend of John Brown." (MONDAY: Racism in the Legislature, 1850.) mid-1800s were thinking about gold in the hills. Some saw riches to be reaped in other ways. At the gambling tables in San Fran- cisco, for example.

One such man was Green Dennis, a slave trader from Mobile, Ala. Dennis set out for California with his slave, George Washington Dennis, in the summer of 1849. At New Orleans he joined a group of gamblers for the journey to San Francisco via Panama. Dennis had to pay 350 for his slave's passage, a fare much higher than average. Ship captains didn't like to carry slaves as passengers ty on Montgomery Street.

He sold this land six months later for $32,000 and then bought the blocks bounded by Post, O'Farrell, Hyde and Larkin Streets, an area now crowded with hotels and apartment buildings. Next he a the block bounded by Post, Sutter, Scott and Divisadero Streets, which is the present location of Mount Zion Hospital. Dennis's other business ventures included The City's first livery stables at San-some and Washington Streets and its first wood and coal yard on Broadway near Montgomery. LOST OPPORTUNITY Slave trader Green Dennis would have done better with George Washington Dennis Ouotas Topped TOKYO (API Peking's New China News Agency reported Red China's plastics industry, which started in 1953, overfulfilled state production quotas in the first half" of 1968, producing 6,250 tons of vinyl 50 percent more than a year before. but in signing it Brown had already made his the letter, CHANGES OWNERS Dennis and his high rolling friends gambled all the way.

In one poker game Dennis put up George as 3 bet, and as a full partner. i s-srff George Dennis and his wife, Margaret Ann, a free Negro who came to Sanj Francisco with her mother! WHEREAS. IT BE PROUDLY ANNOUNCED THAT AN ALL NEW. BRIGHT, Most. The winner bet his new "chattel in another game, lost.

In a third game Dennis won his slave back j'iagain. The party arrived in San sjtFrancisco September 17, 1349 and where rg Washington Dennis was to show he had more on the ball than any of the men who had gambled with his life. WW LADYBUG SHOP HAS COME TO THE BIG AND LADYBUG IS WHAT IT'S and father from Baltimore, lived in a home he built at 2507 Bush Street. They had ten children, the eldest of whom, Edward, became San Francisco's first Afro-American policeman. George Dennis knew Mary-Ellen (Mammy) Pleasant, a Georgia -born slave who achieved wealth and influence after she came to San Francisco from Boston as a free woman of 37 in 1849.

ALL ABOUT! JUNIOR EYE-CATCHING, HEART-WARMING THAT YOU'LL FIND IN A HAPPY ABUNDANCE AT ALL 7 BIG IN AND SEE THEM WHAT WE SHOW HERE IS JUST A TEENY, TINY SAMPLE OF WHAT'S IN Much has been written of Mammy Pleasant with emphasis largely on her activi QmDJT cod vnn wl I 1 Ul IUU ties as a madam who operated a string of bordellos for the high and mighty of San Francisco's golden era. RIGHTS PIONEER The gamblers soon established Hotel El Dorado in the vicinity of Portsmouth Square and put George to work as a porter in the gambling casino. Dennis, who had found to his surprise that slavery was an unpopular practice in San Francisco, offered George his freedom the going price tag on a ticket out of slavery at that time. OFFER ACCEPTED George accepted eagerly. In an incredibly short time, the Hotel El Dorado porter had saved the $1000, mostly in nickels and dimes swept up from the floor of the gambling casino while on the job.

Then he saved an additional $1000 and sent the money to Alabama with a white friend to buy his mother out of slavery and bring her to San Francisco. After mother and son were reunited, George rented a restaurant concession in the hotel for his mother who soon averaged $200 a day selling hot meals to the gamblers. George, meanwhile, accumulated $18,000 which he invested in a parcel of proper- But this is misplaced emphasis, according to some historians who today regard Mammy Pleasant as "The Mother of Civil Rights in California." These historians now stress Mammy Pleasant's connection with John Brown in the fanatical abolitionist's audacious though abortive raid on the Federal arsenal at Har per's Ferry. On January 4, 1904, the San Francisco Call put the accent on Mammy Pleasant's part in John Brown's raid in this obituary: "The remains of Mammy PI a a who died early Monday morning at the Home of Lyman Sherwood, on Filbert Street, will rest tonight under the soil of the little cemetery in the town of Napa, to which her body was WHAT EVERY HUSBAND NEEDS taken this morning. 'A FRIEND' "One last request of Mam HUNT WOOL PLAID SKIRT WITH BACK WRAP, FRONT TIE, SNUFF OR REDWOOD 5-13 $20 CREW NECK WOOL PULLOVER IN SNUFF OR REDWOOD 34-40 $13 PURE CAMELHAIR A LINE SKIRT my was that there be placed above her grave a tombstone bearing her name, age, nativity, and the words: 'She was a friend of John "With the money inherited from her first husband (in Boston), she came to California and was here in 1358 when the first news of John Brown's efforts to free the slaves of the South was conveyed to San Francisco.

"Being in full sympathy with the movement, she conceived the idea of lending Brown financial assistance for the rt a i and April 5, 1858, found her eastward bound with a $30,000 United States Treasury draft, which had been procured for he through the aid of Robert Swain, John W. Coleman and Mr. Alford. MEETS BROWN "Reaching Boston, Mrs. Pleasant arranged for a meeting with John Brown in Windsor, Canada.

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