Pershing Square Metro station renamed after Biddy Mason<\/p>\n
Metro\u2019s board voted Thursday to rename the Pershing Square station in downtown L.A. to \u201cBiddy Mason Station\u201d in honor of one of L.A.’s most prominent Black landowners and philanthropists of the 1800s.<\/p>\n
Topline:<\/p>\n
The Metro board voted unanimously Thursday to rename the Pershing Square Metro station after Bridget \u201cBiddy\u201d Mason, a woman who went from enslavement to owning much of what\u2019s now downtown Los Angeles.<\/p>\n
At the board meeting: Metro\u2019s board approved the motion unanimously, and a majority of public commenters spoke in favor of the motion. \u201cI 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,\u201d said L.A. County Supervisor Holly Mitchell, who co-authored the motion.<\/p>\n
About the motion: Metro board chair and L.A. Mayor Karen Bass introduced the motion, noting that millions of Metro riders would encounter Mason\u2019s name and legacy. Bass called Mason \u201ca 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.\u201d<\/p>\n
Response to pushback: \u201cThere’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,\u201d Mitchell said.<\/p>\n
The backstory: The vote is part of a yearslong effort to bring light to Mason\u2019s legacy. Last month, the L.A. City Council approved a motion to rename downtown\u2019s Pershing Square, originally named for World War I Gen. John Pershing, after Biddy Mason. A small park on the site of Mason\u2019s former homestead has also memorialized her since the 1990s, according to the Los Angeles Conservancy<\/a>.<\/p>\n 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. \u201cBiddy Mason herself said that the open hand is blessed because it gives in abundance even as it receives,\u201d \u200aMichael Ellison-Lewis, a board member of the Biddy Mason Charitable Foundation, said at the Metro meeting. \u201cThe closed hand, nothing good can come into it, and nothing good can go out.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Pershing Square Metro station renamed after Biddy Mason Metro\u2019s board voted Thursday to rename the Pershing Square station…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":506520,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[48,52,51,47,50,49],"class_list":["post-506519","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/506519","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=506519"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/506519\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/506520"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=506519"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=506519"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=506519"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}