Canadian journalist and lawyer, Mary Ann Shadd Cary (1823 – 1893) campaigned against slavery. She is the first black woman to found a newspaper in North America.
A militant childhood
Born October 9, 1823, in Wilmington, Delaware, Mary Ann Shadd was the eldest of thirteen children of Harriet Burton Parnell and Abraham Doras Shadd, a shoemaker. She was born free, but in the midst of slavery in the United States. Involved in the abolitionist American Anti-Slavery Society, his father played an active role in the Underground Railroad which helped runaway slaves get to Canada.
When Delaware outlaws the education of African Americans, the Shadd family moves to Pennsylvania where Mary attends a Quaker school. In 1840, when she was only 17 years old, Mary created a school for black children in West Whester. She would then teach at other schools in Pennsylvania and New York.
The Provincial Freeman
In 1850, the United States Congress passed the Fugitive Slave Law aimed at discouraging assistance to fugitive slaves and enforcing their arrest. Mary and her brother Isaac then settled in Canada, quickly joined by the rest of the family. In 1858, their father Abraham will be the first black man elected in Canada by obtaining a position of councillor.
In Windsor (Ontario), Mary Ann Shadd creates a mixed school, very attached to the idea that education will make it possible to fight against racism. She founded an anti-slavery journal called The Provincial Freeman. Mary thus becomes the first black woman to create a weekly newspaper in North America, and her newspaper is also the first to let African Americans speak. The Provincial Freeman , published in Canada but also distributed in the United States, notably encourages African-Americans to leave the United States for Canada. She published it until 1861.
Mary travels to Canada and the United States to defend the idea of full citizenship for Black Americans and to encourage African Americans to emigrate to Canada. Her publications include A Plea for Emigration (A plea for emigration) in this sense.
Graduated at age 60
In 1856, Mary Ann Shadd married a Canadian barber, Thomas F. Cary, with whom she had two children:Sarah and Linton. Thomas died in 1860 and Mary returned to live in the United States with her children, shortly before the start of the Civil War. During the conflict, she committed herself to the recruitment of black volunteers in the Union Army.
After the war, Mary taught in schools reserved for black students before settling in Washington, where she was hired in public schools. At the same time, she joined the Faculty of Law at Howard University; she obtained her law degree in 1883, at the age of 60, making her only the second black woman to obtain a degree in the United States.
As committed as ever, Mary joins the National Woman Suffrage Association (National Association for Women's Suffrage). She campaigned alongside Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton for women's suffrage.
Mary Ann Shadd Cary died in Washington in June 1893.