Women in Literature and Music

Mary-Ann Shadd Cary

Born Mary-Ann Camberton Shadd Cary October 9, 1823, in Wilmington, Delaware, USA. Her parents were freed slaves who had 12 other children, Mary-Ann was the eldest. She was educated by Quakers and went on to teach all over the northeastern US including New York City. Like her parents who were abolitionists, who's home was a safehouse on the Underground Railroad, Mary-Ann also pursued activism when she moved north to Canada.

On September 10, 1851, she attended the 1st North American Convention of Colored Freemen, at St. Lawrence's Hall, in Toronto, Ontario; it was the first time the convention was held outside of the US. The event was overseen by notable figures like, Henry Bibb, Josiah Henson, J.T. Fisher, amoung others; it was attended by hundreds of black community leaders from all over Canada, the US and England. Many at the convention encouraged African-Americans escaping slavery in the US, to come to Canada. The year before in 1850, the US had passed the Fugitive Slave Act, which allowed slaveowners to recapture escaped slaves, in states where slavery had been deemed illegal. At the convention, Henry & Mary Bibb, abolitionists and newspaper co-owners of the Voice of the Fugitive, met Mary-Ann and convinced her to take up a teaching position in Sandwich, Canada West (now Windsor, Ontario). After moving there, Mary-Ann founded a racially-integrated school with the financial backing of the American Missionary Association, that accepted both colored and white students. The school was open to all who could afford to attend; at the time education was not government funded.

Mary-Ann also wrote educational pamphlets that described the pros of moving north to Canada including one called, The Plea for Emigration/Notes of Canada West (1852). At this time, Mary-Ann opposed the continued existence of segregated schools for black children & began butting heads with the Bibbs who were in favor of segregation, the dispute was highly publicized in the Bibb's newspaper, Voice of the Fugitive and as result Mary-Ann lost funding for her school.

An estimated number of 30-40,000 slaves and freed-people, reached Canada through the Underground Railroad, by 1850 over 35,000 black people living in Canada West. To promote emigration, Mary-Ann published accounts of the success stories of black people in Canada in The Provincial Freeman, a weekly newspaper first issued on March 24, 1853 in Toronto; it was issued in 3 Canadian cities, Windsor, Toronto & Chatham for 4 years between 1853-57. This made Mary-Ann the first black woman in North America to run a newspaper and one of the first female journalists in Canada. The newspaper frequently featured abolitionist authors and also promoted women's rights. The newspaper was edited by, Samuel Ringgold Ward, a famous lecturer and former slave who lived in Toronto. Though both Ward and Mary-Ann wrote and edited the newspaper, Mary-Ann never listed her own name or took credit for any of the articles she helped write. Unfortunately, the paper had to close due to overwhelming financial pressure.

After spending the first few years of the American Civil War as a schoolteacher in Chatham, Ontario, Mary-Ann returned to the US and began working as a recruitment officer for the Union Army. Later she moved to Washington, D.C., where she returned to teaching. Decades later in the early 1880's, Mary-Ann enrolled at Howard University, to study law. She graduated in 1883, becoming one of the first black women to earn a law degree.

Mary-Ann Shadd Cary died on June 5, 1893, aged 70. In the century since her death, Mary-Ann Shadd Cary has received acclaim for her work as a newspaper editor and community leader; in 1994, Mary-Ann was designated as a Person of National Historic Significance by the Canadian government.

https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/mary-ann-shadd