Mary Ann Shadd Cary

As a racial activist, writer, editor, speaker, educator and sufragette, Mary Ann Shadd Cary fought on many fronts to achieve equality for all black men and women. She became best known for her pathbreaking roles as the first black woman newspaper editor and one of the earliest black women lecturers in North American History.
Born Mary Ann Shadd in Wilmington, Delaware on October 9, 1823, she was the eldest of thirteen children of the free blacks Abraham Doras Shadd and Harriet Parnell Shadd. Abraham, a prosperous shoemaker, was a prominent abolitionist who spoke out for racial equality, stressed education for blacks, and opened his home to runaway slaves. His views and activism strongly invfluenced Mary’s career.
African Americans went to Canada in increasing numbers after the United States passed the Fugitive Slave Act in 1850 (which left many free blacks subject to arrest and slavery). Some settled in segregated communities. Others, like Mary Ann Shadd Cary, promoted full integration into society. A teacher and anti-slavery crusader, Shadd immigrated to Windsor in 1851. She started the Provincial Freedman in 1853 to encourage Blacks to seek equality through education and self-reliance. Two years later she moved the newspaper to Chatham, where it operated for the rest of the decade. Widowed in 1860, Shadd Cary returned to the U.S. in 1863 to work for racial equality in the aftermath of emancipation.
In her forties, Cary became the first woman to enroll in the law department of Howard University, receiving the LLB degree in 1883. She lent her skills as an orator and legal expert to the causes of female and black suffrage. She argued before the Judiciary Committee of the United States House of Representatives that women had a right to vote under the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amenements, which provided that right to good citizens and taxpayers. She pressed the legal point and actually became a registered voter in the District of Columbia, one of the few women to gain the franchise at that time. Cary joined the National Women’s Suffrage Association and in 1878 addressed the group’s convention.
In her later years, she continued to lecture and write, never ceasing to stir up controversy in her pursuit of rights for blacks and women. Mary Ann Shad Cary died in Washinton, D.C., on June 5, 1893, leaving behind a unique legacy in a wide range of fields.

Unless otherwise mentioned, these profiles are from the book: Great African-American Women by Darryl Lyman (Gramercy Books 2000)