Biddy Mason was an enslaved woman in Georgia when her enslaver, Robert Smith, converted to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. At the time, she was a midwife. Scholars do not know if she converted or not, but she did go West with her enslavers. She lived for a short while in Utah, where the laws did not free her from slavery, but went west again with Smith when he went to California. Smith did not tell the people he enslaved that slavery was illegal in California. However, Biddy and her family eventually found out. She sued for freedom and won.
She settled in Los Angeles, where she continued using her skills to work as a nurse and midwife. She is featured in a 1930s mural by Bernard Zakheim titled The History of Medicine in California, currently in the UC San Francisco Hall. This remarkable depiction of Biddy has her in the center, treating a malaria patient next to a famous early doctor from LA, John Griffin, with whom she is on equal terms. The multiple unverifiable stories about her attest to the great esteem she had in Los Angeles.
The traceable facts are even more remarkable. A careful steward of her money, Biddy became a wealthy landowner, using her good fortune to help others. Besides practicing midwifery, she visited people in prison, helped those in distress, founded a school, a foster home, and perhaps her greatest legacy for Los Angeles, Biddy was the driving force to establish the First African Methodist Episcopal Church, now the oldest and largest African American church in Los Angeles. Her life is summed up in a proverb she often told, as related by her family.
“If you hold your hand closed, nothing good can come in. The open hand is blessed, for it gives in abundance, even as it receives.”
For more information, please read
Beasley, Delilah L. The Negro Trail Blazers of California (New York: Negro Universities Press, 1919), 109-110. http://ia800203.us.archive.org/2/items/negrotrailblazer00beas/negrotrailblazer00beas.pdf
Broxton, Jackie And Kevin Waite. “Op-Ed: A monument to California’s Black history — and a great work of art — may soon be destroyed,” Los Angeles Times, July 10, 2020 https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2020-07-10/op-ed-a-monument-to-californias-black-history-and-a-great-work-of-art-may-soon-be-destroyed