“All human beings are practicing historians. We live our lives; we tell our stories. It is as natural as breathing.”
— Gerda Lerner
Food as activism? You’d better believe it.
One needn’t care a solitary jot about psychoactive drugs like marijuana (it isn’t this beer-centric correspondent’s cup of hallucinogenic-infused tea, you know) to be fascinated by the history of its use, and by extension, those who have championed its cause.
As, for instance, Mary Jane Rathbun (1922 – 1999), the woman who came to be known and praised as Brownie Mary. Born in Chicago and raised in Minneapolis, Rathbun moved to San Francisco during World War II.
She already had displayed a predilection for activism.
At the age of 13, she was involved in an altercation with a nun who tried to cane her, but Rathbun fought back … as a teenager, she moved out of her home and found a job as a waitress; she worked as a waitress for most of her adult life. Social activism appealed to her from a young age; she traveled from Chicago to Wisconsin to campaign for the right of miners to form unions. In the late 1940s, she worked as an activist promoting abortion rights for women in Minneapolis.
As early as the 1970s, Rathbun was baking the goods in the city by the bay, a locale integral to her story. After all, where else but San Francisco?
Indianapolis or Dallas? The mind boggles at the mere thought.
In the early ’70s, she started selling brownies augmented with marijuana to make extra money. Though Rathbun was an early adopter of the edible, chocolate and marijuana have a long history together, going back to the notorious “hashish fudge” of writer Alice B. Toklas. But Rathbun took her brownie baking public, advertising for customers with printed flyers. Eventually she attracted law enforcement’s notice.
One thing led to another, with Rathbun eventually greeting her destiny at a pivotal moment in history.
The same year that the CDC first used the term AIDS, Rathbun was arrested for bringing brownies to a cancer patient. She’d become a regular volunteer at San Francisco General Hospital, and she noticed that her treats had a mysterious effect. For AIDS and cancer patients wracked by nausea, her brownies could ease discomfort and induce hunger, well-known attributes of marijuana. She began baking pot brownies by the score in 1984—at her peak, one fellow cannabis activist estimated she made more than 1600 a month.
Volunteering to work with AIDS patients from the very beginning of the epidemic, Rathbun turned out industrial quantities of brownies with donated cannabis for “my gay friends” and her “kids,” as she called them. In a Chicago Tribune story, a fellow nurse called her a “shining beacon,” while patients swore that the brownies brought them back from the brink. In 1986, the hospital awarded her with a “Volunteer of the Year” award.
For the rest of the story, visit Atlas Obscura: Remembering ‘Brownie Mary,’ San Francisco’s Marijuana Pioneer, by Anne Ewbank, from which the preceding passages are drawn. Ewbanks offers this rock-solid coda (my emphasis).
But even at her lowest, (Rathbin) showed the same rebellious streak she’d shown as a child quarreling with nuns. She was glad to have bedeviled the authorities for so long, she told a reporter. “They wish they never heard the name ‘Brownie Mary.’”
Here are the takeaways, courtesy of the “Cannabis Pioneers” series at I Heart Jane.
- Compassion first: Brownie Mary’s brownies were a lifeline to patients in pain, disregarding profit or personal gain.
- Civil disobedience works: Her repeated arrests created media moments that softened public opinion and pressured lawmakers, ultimately contributing to the changes we enjoy the benefits of today.
- Grassroots to government: From ward volunteer to Prop 215 icon, Rathbun proved that local action can spark statewide reform.
- Legacy lives on: Every legal cannabis edible sold today carries a spiritual dash of her powdered-sugar rebellion.
“Edibles & Potables” is Food & Dining Magazine’s Sunday slot for news and views that range beyond our customary metropolitan Louisville coverage area, as intended to be food (and drink) for thought.
Last time:
Edibles & Potables: The story of Thomas Downing, the Big Apple’s Black oyster king
The post Edibles & Potables: Remembering Mary Jane Rathbun, a.k.a. Brownie Mary (1922 – 1999) appeared first on Food & Dining Magazine.
