Biddy Mason's Place
She walked two thousand miles to a free state and still had to go to court to be free.
Listen to this place’s story in Peplos.
How the story begins
She could not testify against the man who claimed to own her. California law barred Black people from giving evidence against whites. So in January 1856, Judge Benjamin Hayes took Biddy Mason into his chambers and asked her himself. She told him she did not want to go south. She had already walked more than two thousand miles. Born enslaved in Georgia, she followed the wagons of Robert Smith, a Mormon convert, to Utah and then to San Bernardino, herding his sheep, with her three daughters.
The rest is in the app. Peplos plays the full story when you reach the place. You can also listen ahead of time.
Visiting
333 South Spring Street, between Spring Street and Broadway, Downtown. A public pocket park reached through a passage that is easy to miss. Go in daylight. The concrete wall in the park, about eighty feet long, tells her life as a timeline, beginning with the words "Biddy Mason born a slave."
Sources
- ACLU of Northern California, Gold Chains: Biddy Mason
- Los Angeles Almanac, Biddy Mason
- Los Angeles Conservancy, Biddy Mason Memorial Park
- Esotouric, Biddy Mason
- Wikipedia, Biddy Mason
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