Mary Ann Shadd Activism in Canada
Law Degree for First Woman to Found and Edit Newspaper
Oct 24, 2009
Mary Shadd was born in Wilmington, Delaware, October 9, 1823, the eldest of thirteen children. Her parents were prominent freeborn abolitionists Abraham Doras Shadd and Harriet (Parnell) Shadd.
Mary Ann Shadd’s Education and Arrival in Canada
As black children were not allowed education in Delaware, the family moved to West Chester, Pennsylvania where the children attended a Quaker boarding school. At sixteen, Mary returned to Wilmington to organize a school for black children. She also taught in New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania.
She believed as her parents did that through education, thrift, and hard work racial parity could be achieved. Provisions of the Fugitive Slave Act that was approved in 1850 allowed slave owners to capture escaped slaves. Following its passage, Mary and her brother Isaac moved to Canada. Their parents and younger siblings arrived in Canada in 1851.
First Woman to Publish and Edit Newspaper
With support of the American Missionary Association, she opened an interracial school in Windsor, Ontario. She also publicly opposed Henry Walton Bibb who was closely associated with the Refugee Home Society that supported segregated communities. A strong believer in complete integration, she wrote pamphlets and lectured against slavery, and for black emigration to Canada.
Mary Ann became the first woman to found, publish, and edit a newspaper in Canada. The first edition of the Provincial Freeman in 1853 began with support of black abolitionist Samuel Ringgold Ward. Publication was suspended while Shadd raised funds through public speaking engagements in Canada and the United States.
Publication resumed in Toronto in 1854. With the motto, “self-reliance is the true road to independence”, its focus was to connect with fugitives, champion the anti-slavery cause, and encourage integration. It also urged African-American emigration to Canada where slavery was outlawed in 1833.
The publication was periodically interrupted for financial reasons and was moved to Chatham, Ontario, then ceased in 1857.
John Brown Meeting and Civil War Recruitment
In 1856, Mary Ann married barber Thomas Cary. She returned to teaching at an interracial school in Chatham while watching the conflict developing in the U.S. When John Brown visited Canada in 1858, she attended the meeting with her brother Isaac. She would later edit and prepare for publication A Voice from Harpers Ferry, the memoir of a man who joined Brown after that meeting.
After her husband died in 1860, Mary left Canada with her two children. Throughout the Civil War, she worked at recruitment for the Union army. After the war, she was involved in education for emancipated slaves.
Law Degree and Professional Development
To further the cause of civil rights and equal rights, she earned a law degree at Howard University at age sixty. Mary Ann Shadd was not the first African-American woman to earn a law degree, though some records make that claim. That distinction belongs to Charlotte E. Ray, graduate of Howard University in 1872.
Continuing her work in the civil rights and suffragist movements, Mary returned to Canada in 1881 to help organization a women’s rally. She died of cancer in Washington, D.C. during the summer of 1893. Her work was an inspiration to many who continued the struggle for equality.
Mary Ann Shadd is recognized by the Government of Canada as a person of historic significance. An historic plaque to honor her was installed in Chatham by the Ontario Heritage Foundation.
Sources:
The Freedom-Seekers: Blacks in Early Canada by Daniel G. Hill, The Book Society of Canada 1981
Mary Ann Shadd Cary: the Black Press and Protest in the Nineteenth Centuryby Jane Rhodes, Indiana University Press, 1988
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