The Freed Woman Who Built Los Angeles

Biddy Mason walked into a Los Angeles courtroom in 1856 as property. She walked out free. But what she did with that freedom reads like Psalm 112 made flesh.

Born into slavery in Mississippi, Biddy had been forced to walk nearly two thousand miles behind her master's wagon train to California. After winning her freedom, she worked as a nurse and midwife, saving every dollar she could. Within ten years, she purchased land on Spring Street for $250 — one of the first Black women in Los Angeles to own property. That investment grew into a small fortune.

But Biddy Mason did not hoard what the Almighty had entrusted to her. She opened her home on flood days to stranded families. She paid grocery bills for neighbors who could not feed their children. She visited prisoners in the county jail, bringing food and scripture. She founded First African Methodist Episcopal Church in her living room with just twelve people. When economic downturns shook Los Angeles, Biddy's generosity never wavered.

The Psalmist writes that the righteous person "has scattered abroad gifts to the poor" and that "their righteousness endures forever." Biddy Mason died in 1891, but a century later the city of Los Angeles dedicated a memorial wall in her honor on the very block where she once lived. Her horn, as the Psalm promises, was exalted with honor — not because she grasped for it, but because she gave it all away.