Mary Ellen Pleasant was a Black conductor of the Underground Railroad, and she was on the run. But in 1852, when her boat arrived on the shores of Gold Rush-era San Francisco, she walked off as someone else. Someone white. Her mission: Expand the Underground Railroad westward—and use her ability to pass to get it done. She’d spend the next decade living a mysterious double life and would go on to be known as “The Black City Hall” of San Francisco. Today, the story of Mary Ellen Pleasant, the double-agent abolitionist who shook up the west coast in the name of liberation.

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