By Garry Blanson
It’s really mind-blowing thinking about how even though Black People had their wives “raped” by their slaveowners, had their children “sold” out from under them, and were constantly “whipped and beaten” by their slaveowners, they still found a way to be highly successful!
Bridget “Biddy” Mason was able to achieve so much in spite of the fact that she was born into slavery. She was born on August 15, 1818, in Hancock County, Georgia. When Bridget was a young child, she was sold to a White man and was eventually given or sold to a White couple (Robert and Rebecca Smith, sometime in the 1840s). She had three girls, who were said to have been fathered by her new slaveowner (Robert Smith). During her teenage years, Bridget learned skills as a midwife, domestic and agricultural, and even herbal medicine. A big turning point in her life came in 1847 when her slaveowners took up the Mormon Religion and moved to Salt Lake City, Utah. The reason it was a big turning point was because while staying in Utah, the slaveowner met a church leader.
After winning her freedom, Bridget took up work as a midwife nurse delivering babies; her herbal medicines were of great help during the “Smallpox Epidemic” of the 1860s in Los Angeles, California, which all but eliminated the Indian population of Los Angeles. Bridget was one of the first Negroes in Los Angeles, California, to actually own her own land! In 1866, she purchased a nearly one-acre site between present-day Broadway (then Fort Street) and Spring Street, between 3rd and 4th Streets. On this, the present-day location of “The Biddy Mason Memorial Park,” she built her homestead.
On January 15, 1891, Bridget “Biddy” Mason died and was buried in Evergreen Cemetery (in the neighborhood of Boyle Heights). Furthermore, near the site of Mason’s home lies an 82-foot-long installation in her honor (the concrete wall contains embedded objects that tell the story of her life). In 1989, the local city officials named a city park located on the site of her former home in Los Angeles, California in her honor, it is named “The Biddy Mason Memorial Park.”
