Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
The Boundless Biddy Mason: An Odyssey from Slavery to Freedom Across the American West

The Boundless Biddy Mason: An Odyssey from Slavery to Freedom Across the American West

Waite, Kevin

Hardcover

Biographies GeneralBlack American History

Publisher Price: $29.95

PREORDER - Expected ship date October 13, 2026

ISBN10: 0520394720
ISBN13: 9780520394728
Publisher: University of California Press
Published: Oct 13 2026
Pages: 456
Weight: 1.90
Height: 1.30 Width: 5.90 Depth: 9.10
Language: English

How Biddy Mason crossed the continent, broke free from slavery, and built Black Los Angeles.

Born in bondage, Biddy Mason endured one of the longest forced migrations in American history--three thousand miles on foot from Georgia to California. She and her daughters labored in slavery in the free state of California for five years before launching a landmark emancipation suit in 1856. Free at last, she defied barriers of race and gender, rising to prominence as a healer, philanthropist, church builder, and real estate entrepreneur whose commercial properties stood at what became known as the Wall Street of the West. By the time of her death in 1891, she had laid the foundations of Black Los Angeles and ranked among the richest women of color in the United States.

In this first book-length biography of Mason, prizewinning historian Kevin Waite uncovers an extraordinary story of survival that carries readers from the cotton South to metropolitan California, and through the Civil War, Reconstruction, and the dawn of Jim Crow. By retracing Mason's odyssey, he illuminates both the continental sweep of American slavery and the fragile, hard-won possibilities of freedom in the West.

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