Biddy Mason Helped Build Downtown Los Angeles. Her Descendants Want You To Learn More.

Cheryl Cox was in the fourth grade when she spotted her “Grandma Biddy’s” name printed on a page of a textbook. The information was short, incomplete, and placed along the book’s spine as if the real estate mogul who helped build downtown Los Angeles was an afterthought.

Prior to that day, Cox had heard family stories passed down from each generation about Biddy Mason, her four-times-great grandmother. Cox eagerly raised her hand to share the remarkable details with her classmates. As she spoke up, the teacher interrupted her mid-sentence, reprimanded her for being untruthful, and called her mother.

She didn’t get in trouble. Cox knew her family’s truth and her mother corrected the teacher.

Decades later, in 2012, Cox, her sister, and her mother decided to honor Mason’s philanthropy by creating and trademarking a foundation named after Mason. With the Biddy Mason Foundation, they have increased their family’s centuries-long charitable work and community service beyond the city of Los Angeles.

“Biddy Mason is an American hero. She’s a pioneer. She’s a trailblazer. And because of these qualities, she was a living legend,” Cox, the CEO of the foundation, says.

Mason created a legacy of excellence during a time when being Black and a woman was not legally considered a whole human being. She was one of the first Black people to legally fight for her and her family’s way out of slavery. Yet, her name isn’t as well known as Sojourner Truth and Harriet Tubman, nor is it printed in history books that are currently under threat of being banned.

Mason may have been born into slavery, but she died an entrepreneur, philanthropist, real estate mogul, midwife, nurse, and one of the wealthiest people in California at age 73 in 1891.

Who was “Grandma Biddy”?

Born in 1818, when Mason turned 18 she was purchased by a Mississippi Mormon slave owner.

In 1848, he moved his family and enslaved persons to the West. Mason spent months walking over 1,700 miles behind a 300-wagon caravan to what’s known today as Salt Lake City, Utah. She had three daughters.

In 1851, the owner moved again and trekked 600 miles to California even though he was warned that slavery there was illegal. Mason’s owners decided they were going to move to Texas where slavery was still legal, and remained legal until June 19, 1865.

While in California, Mason made friends with free Black people, such as father and son Charles and Robert Owens who did business with Mason’s owners. Charles Owens married Mason’s daughter, Ellen.

When Mason’s slave owners’ plans leaked, the Owens men stepped in to help. Robert Owens filed a petition in court requesting a hearing. He, along with his son and other residents, stopped the slave owners from trying to skip town with Mason’s family. The local sheriff also assisted by placing Mason’s family, and other Black people owned by Mason’s owner, into protective custody until their case was presented in court, LAist reported.

During this time, Dred Scott, an enslaved Black man living in another free state, Missouri, was also fighting for his freedom in the courts. Scott’s case was appealed all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court. A year before the 7-2 ruling that denied Scott’s freedom, Judge Benjamin Hayes held a hearing for Mason’s petition for freedom.

Black people were not allowed to testify in court, but Hayes listened to Mason’s testimony in a separate room, LAist reported. Hayes decided in January 1856 that Mason, her family as well as all of the other Black people who were held captive  were considered “free forever.”

Cox’s sister, Robynn Cox, said in a 2020 interview with the University of California, San Francisco, that her great-great-great-great grandmother’s case was an exception, and not the rule.

“Biddy Mason provides a clear example of the promise of what America could be if it were to remove systemic barriers that continue to oppress historically marginalized groups,” Robynn Cox said in the interview. “Ultimately, Biddy Mason is a living demonstration of how great this country could be if it honored its principles of inclusion and guaranteed that Black lives matter.”

An entrepreneur builds a legacy

After Mason was emancipated, she educated herself in herbal medicine, ran a midwife business, and gave back to the unhoused.

She also earned her own money — $2 an hour — as the nurse for a Los Angeles doctor. A decade later, Mason was able to save $250 and purchased nearly an acre of land on Los Angeles’ Spring Street and what’s known today as Broadway between 3rd and 4th streets. Tucked away behind a chain of retail shops is the current location of the Biddy Mason Memorial Park, a wall installation of a timeline of Mason’s life and other historical facts – but the family wants more to be done.

“By itself, it is an adequate tribute to my grandmother. It is rare that people of color are honored for their contributions and women of color even less so, Cheryl Cox told Capital B. “While we appreciate the effort that the city made, almost 100 years after her death, it is literally a wall hidden in a parking structure.”

The family hopes that the city will name a portion of Spring Street after her.

“This extraordinary woman, who accomplished unbelievable feats at a time that was unconscionable for a former slave, deserves at minimum a street named after her, along with much, much more,” Cheryl Cox says.

Mason’s land purchase marked the beginning of the development of what’s known today as downtown Los Angeles. This was before systemically racist laws and policies were developed that kept Black people from achieving generational wealth. Biddy opened a variety of businesses that sold everyday necessities, and other business owners bought their properties around hers.

“Biddy Mason will forever be connected to Los Angeles. Her real estate holdings helped shape the city and her philanthropic ventures created many of the first for the city in terms of first Black school that allowed Black people to attend, and the first church,” says Cheryl Cox, who received a formal education in physics and African American studies and currently works in development and marketing.

Mason mostly purchased commercial real estate. She used her self-taught medical skills to nurse the sick, regardless of their race, and took care of those who were incarcerated. Mason’s empathy and compassion for those imprisoned against their will moved her to start an orphanage to care for children whose parents were incarcerated.

“Biddy was a servant leader. She led her community through her service to it. She owned a store and during disasters and plagues that devastated Los Angeles, she left open tabs for anybody in need,” Cheryl Cox says.

Mason was a firm believer in God. Cheryl Cox says that it was ingrained in each generation to keep Mason’s legacy by living by her saying: ​​”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.”

One of those legacies has given back to the Los Angeles community for over 150 years. In 1872, Mason gathered eight emancipated Black men inside her home, and through discussions, they co-founded the First African Methodist Episcopal (FAME) Church of Los Angeles — the first Black church in the city.

Mason donated a portion of her land on which the first location of the church was built. While the church was undergoing construction, services were held in her house, Cheryl Cox says. The FAME church has since expanded to a megachurch on S. Harvard Boulevard.

She had a will and left an inheritance for her two surviving daughters. When Mason died in 1891, her net worth was “approximately $300,000 or about $7,000,000 in today’s dollars…more impressively, the land she owned in downtown Los Angeles is now worth hundreds of millions,” Forbes Magazine reported in 2019.

Mason is featured in the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C.

How descendants and LA residents pay tribute 

A year after the Cox sisters launched their foundation in 2012, Jackie Broxton, a longtime member of FAME, founded the Biddy Mason Charitable Foundation. Through the church, Broxton launched the foundation as a ministry group. The family’s foundation is not affiliated.

“Our family’s always grateful to anybody willing to shine a light on our great-grandmother’s amazing story. She deserves to be celebrated for her contributions in making Los Angeles what it is today,” Cheryl Cox says. However, the family strongly believes that it is their responsibility  to accurately distribute their Grandma Biddy’s legacy to the world.

The family’s foundation leans into Mason’s legacy in medicine, education, and philanthropy. They partner with other nonprofit organizations that do medical missionary work as well as feed and clothe the unhoused. They donate hundreds of book bags stuffed with school supplies to school-aged children living in communities with minimal resources in Los Angeles and Haiti.

“With her freedom, Grandma Biddy was able to accomplish great things and become a pillar of her community,” Robynn Cox, who is an economist and associate professor at the School of Public Policy at the University of California, Riverside, said in her previous interview.

Broxton says it was a no-brainer to name the foundation after Mason and to focus on the overrepresented number of Black children in Los Angeles County’s foster care system. Uplifting Mason’s name is a concerted effort FAME’s foundation is tackling, especially now when Black history is actively being suppressed in classrooms across the country.

“Even people who’ve lived in Los Angeles all their life don’t know about Biddy Mason,” Broxton says. “Her story is remarkable … Biddy Mason should be a household word.”

The group went from hosting Thanksgiving dinners for children growing up in the foster care system to a nonprofit organization that provides services and support to current and former foster care youth. Since 2018, the FAME foundation has given $400,000 in scholarships.

In 2020, the Biddy Mason Center opened. The 4,000 square-foot center on W. 25th Street provides services and housing to current and former foster care youth. It also houses an assortment of Black art and history that includes stories about some of the founders of FAME church, of course, including Biddy.

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