Specifically, about Mary Ellen Williams Smith Pleasant:
Sue Bailey Thurman, Pioneers of Negro Origin in California. Acme Publishing (1952). The was the first book to shine a light on Mrs. Pleasant’s life for readers beyond San Francisco. This out-of-print rare book is found mostly in academic library collections.
Susheel Bibbs, Heritage of Power M.E.P. Publications (2012). Ms. Bibbs has been a staunch advocate for Mrs. Pleasant, conducting original research into her story, creating a one-woman show, Meet Mary Pleasant, which aired on PBS.
Lynn Hudson, PhD, The Making of Mammy Pleasant: A Black Entrepreneur in the 19th Century. San Francisco First Illinois, (2003). This well researched book started as Dr. Hudson’s dissertation. Dr Hudson examines the “folklore of Mary Ellen Pleasant’s real and imagined powers, addressing the lack of historical record of black women’s lives, Hudson argues that the silences and mysteries of Pleasant’s past, whether never recorded or intentionally omitted, reveal as much about her life as what has been documented.”
Jill Jepson, Women’s Concerns: Twelve Women Entrepreneurs of the 18th and 19th Centuries. American University Studies, Vol 11 Peter Lang (2009).
Kelli Carter Jackson, As If She Were Free A Collective Biography of Women and Emancipation in the Americas, from Part III – Envisaging Emancipation during Second Slavery, Chapter 17 – Mary Ellen Pleasant, Nineteenth-Century Massachusetts and California (US), Cambridge University Press: (24 September 2020).
Shomari Wills Black Fortunes: the True Story of the First Six African Americans Who Survived Slavery and Became Millionaires Harper Collins (2018).
Delilah Leontium Beasley, The Negro Trail Blazers of California, A Compilation of Records From The California Archives And The Bancroft Library at The University Of California Berkeley and from the Diaries and Old Papers and Conversations of the Old Pioneers in the State of California. Los Angeles CA (1919).
W.E.B. DuBois. The Gift of Black Folk – The Negroes in the Making of America The Stratford Co. 1924
General
James Oliver Horton and Lois E Horton Black Bostonians-Family Life and Community Struggle in the Antebellum North
Betsy Tyler A Thousand Leagues of Blue-The Pacific Whaling Voyages of Charles and Susan Veeder of Nantucket. Nantucket Historical Association (2019). An enlightening book on Nantucket and life on whaling ships in the early to mid 19th century, told from the diaries of a whaling ship captain’s wife who accompanied him on a four year voyage.
Mifflin Wistar Biggs & Booker T Washington. Shadow and Light: An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century. Mifflin born free in Philadelphia arrived in San Francisco in 1851, merchant and publisher of two newspapers, Alto California and Mirror of Light, chronicles rough and tumble San Francisco including the Ft Gunnybags incident.
Clarke-Hines, Darlene, Lifting the Veil, Shattering the Silence, Black Women’s History of Slavery and Freedom The State of Afro-American History, 1986 Baton Rogue & London, Louisiana University State Press
David Barry Gaspar & Darlene Clark Hine Beyond Bondage: Free Women of Color in the Americas (New Black Studies Series) 2004, University of Illinois Press; First Edition
Luisah Ifish, Jambalaya: The Natural Woman’s Book of Personal Charms and Practical Rituals. Harper Collins (1985/2021)
E. Diby Baltzell, Puritan Boston and Quaker Philadelphia. Transaction Publishers (1979).
Kathleen M Brown, Undoing Slavery: Bodies, Race, and Rights in the Age of Abolition, 2023 University of Pennsylvania Press. Explores the 1799 Pleasants Chancery Case.
San Francisco
Robin C Johnson Enchantress, Sorceress, Madwoman: The True Story of Sarah Althea Hill Adventuress of Old San Francisco
Michael J. Makley, The Infamous King Of The Comstock: William Sharon And The Gilded Age In The West (Shepperson Series in Nevada History) (2009).
Douglas Henry Daniels, Pioneer Urbanites: A Social & Cultural History of Black San Francisco, 1990 University of Oxford Press.