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Metro votes to rename Pershing Square station after pioneering Black Angeleno Biddy Mason
Bridget “Biddy” Mason became one of Los Angeles’ first Black woman landowners, building wealth through real estate.
(
LaMonica Peters
/
The LA Local
)
Topline:
The Metro board voted unanimously Thursday to rename the Pershing Square Metro station after Bridget “Biddy” Mason, a woman who went from enslavement to owning much of what’s now downtown Los Angeles.
At the board meeting: Metro’s board approved the motion unanimously, and a majority of public commenters spoke in favor of the motion. “I really look forward to the opportunity for this change, recognizing what it must have taken for a woman born into slavery, who fought for her freedom in California, fought to stay in California when her enslaver was attempting to take her back to Texas,” said L.A. County Supervisor Holly Mitchell, who co-authored the motion.
About the motion: Metro board chair and L.A. Mayor Karen Bass introduced the motion, noting that millions of Metro riders would encounter Mason’s name and legacy. Bass called Mason “a trailblazer who petitioned for her own emancipation from slavery and went on to become one of the first Black women to own land in Los Angeles.”
Response to pushback: “There's been some public debate as to whether it should remain named Pershing Square, but I don't know that Mr. Pershing owned land in downtown L.A., and she did,” Mitchell said.
The backstory: The vote is part of a yearslong effort to bring light to Mason’s legacy. Last month, the L.A. City Council approved a motion to rename downtown’s Pershing Square, originally named for World War I Gen. John Pershing, after Biddy Mason. A small park on the site of Mason’s former homestead has also memorialized her since the 1990s, according to the Los Angeles Conservancy.
About Biddy Mason: She is celebrated as a philanthropist who helped to found a number of community institutions, including the First A.M.E. Church of Los Angeles. “Biddy Mason herself said that the open hand is blessed because it gives in abundance even as it receives,” Michael Ellison-Lewis, a board member of the Biddy Mason Charitable Foundation, said at the Metro meeting. “The closed hand, nothing good can come into it, and nothing good can go out.”
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