Mary Ann Shadd Cary: Educator, Activist, 1st African-American Woman Editor in North America and 1st to enroll in Howard University Law School
Posted on 18. Jun, 2010 by Leshell Hatley in Law, Law, Scholarly Celebrations
You have a right to your freedom and to every other privilege connected with it and if you cannot secure these in Virginia or Alabama, by all means make your escape without delay to some other locality in God’s wide universe. —Mary Ann Shadd Cary
Early Life
Born to a free African-American family in Wilmington, Delaware, MaryAnn Shadd was the first of 13 children. Her father was an abolitionist and a conductor on the Underground Railroad. There home was a station on the Underground Railroad, where hey provided shelter for slaves who were running away to find freedom.
From an early age, Mary was exposed to the anti-slavery movement, where she developed a good grasp of the issues and honed her debating skills.
Teaching
As it was against the law to educate blacks in Delaware, the family moved to West Chester, Pennsylvania, where she attended a Quaker boarding school. At age 16, she returned to Wilmington to teach in a school for black children. Subsequently, she taught in New York and Morristown, New Jersey.
In 1849 she published an essay called “Hints to the Colored People of the North“. She then wrote a letter to Frederick Douglass who published the North Star newspaper. She was critical of the black leaders and the black churches. She called for education and action to correct the injustices which were suffered by blacks.
In 1850, the Fugitive Slave Act was passed. This Act allowed free northern blacks and escaped southern slaves to be rounded up and sent to the South. This law also increased the flow of traffic on the Underground Railroad, which assisted escaping slaves to travel from the southern slave-holding states to the northern states and Canada. As blacks could no longer take their freedom for granted within the United States, Canada became a beacon of hope. Mary and her brother, Isaac, fled to Windsor, Ontario, in 1851.
In Canada, she continued her teaching and established a school that was open to people of all races, while continuing to devote herself to the abolitionist cause working on behalf of fugitive slaves. At this time, slave owners were desperately attempting to deter runaway slaves from seeking refuge in Canada.
Author
In order to quash horror stories concocted by southern slaveholders to thwart black immigration, Shadd published a forty-four–page pamphlet entitled A Plea for Emigration or Notes on Canada West in Its Moral, Social and Political Aspect: Suggestions Respecting Mexico, West Indies and Vancouver’s Island for the Information of Colored Emigrants. In this pamphlet, she extolled the virtues of Canada, listed opportunities available to blacks in Canada, and urged them to move north of the 49th parallel.
She teamed up with Samuel Ward of the Anti-Slavery Society and others to publish a newspaper, The Provincial Freeman, with the motto “Self Reliance Is the True Road to Independence.” Subsequently, she became editor of the Freeman and, in so doing, was the first black female editor and publisher in North America. She wrote in one article that she had “broken the editorial ice”.
She married Thomas Cary, a Toronto barber, and lived in Chatham, Ontario, until his death four years later.
Law School
During the Civil War, she became an Army recruiting officer. After the Civil War, she returned to the United States and moved to Washington D.C. with her daughter Elizabeth, where she opened a school for black children and enrolled in Howard University Law School. She taught for 15 years both at public schools and Howard University. Establishing the Colored Women’s Progressive Franchise Association, she was an ardent advocate of women’s rights, urging black women to discern their specific economic and political position and to fight for equal rights and opportunities.
Mary Ann Shadd Cary completed her studies at the age of 60. Some say she practiced law in Washington D.C. for four years. Shamina Sneed of Stanford Law School wrote in her 2002 paper that possibly Mary Ann got the law degree to enhance her image and further herself personally and politically rather than to practice law. Gaining her L.L.B. degree, she is considered to be the first black female lawyer in the United States. After graduation, she launched an attack on the judicial system challenging the House of Representatives for the right to vote and was one of the few women to vote in federal elections during the Reconstruction period.
Women’s Suffrage
Cary was held in high regard by Frederick Douglass, and she worked with Susan B. Anthony to obtain the right to vote for women. Shadd Cary joined the National Woman’s Suffrage Association, working alongside Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton for women’s suffrage, testifying before the Judiciary Committee of the House of Representatives and becoming the first black woman to cast a vote in a national election.
She died in 1893 after suffering with stomach cancer. Her daughter Sarah was still living. Her son Linton had died the previous year. Her obituary described her as “a woman of excellent traits of character and loved by all who knew her”. It goes on to say, “While she may have been excentric at times, she was a woman of kind disposition.”
The Mary Ann Shadd Cary House is a historic residence located at 1421 W Street, Northwest in Washington, D.C. The house was declared a National Historic Landmark on December 8, 1976 and was listed on the National Register of Historic Places. It also is a contributing property to the Greater U Street Historic District.
Her daughter Sarah wrote an essay about her which is published in a book called Homespun Heroines and Other Women of Distinction.
Books
Demanding Justice: A Story about Mary Ann Shadd Cary, Jeri Ferris and Kimanne Smith, Carolrhoda Books, 2003.
Mary Ann Shadd Cary: The Black Press and Protest in the Nineteenth Century, Jane Rhodes, Indiana University Press, 1999.
A Plea for Emigration by Mary Shadd, Mary Shadd Cary (Richard Almante, ed.), Mercury Press, 1998.
More Related posts:
- Ida Gray Nelson/Rollins: First African-American and 23rd Woman to Graduate from Dental School
- Dr. Leslie Fenwick: Dean of the School of Education Howard University
- Georgiana Simpson: One of the 1st African-American Women to Obtain a PhD in America
- Dorothy I. Height: Educator, Activist, and Civil Rights Leader
- Dr. Alicia Nicki Washington, 1st African-American Female in CS @ Howard
