Mary Ann Shadd Cary

Mary Ann Shadd was born on 9 October 1823 in Wilmington, Delaware, the eldest of thirteen children of abolitionist parents, her father a shoemaker and activist. She was educated by Pennsylvania Quakers, and after teaching in several states she devoted the first part of her life to the cause of abolition.

In 1849 Shadd entered the public debate about Black equality and, after the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, moved to Canada West, now Ontario, where many Black Americans were seeking safety. In Windsor she opened a school that welcomed children of all races, and she argued publicly against segregated schooling.

On 24 March 1853, the day after her school closed, she began publishing the Provincial Freeman in Toronto, the first newspaper published by a Black woman in North America and the first by any woman in Canada. Worried that readers would resist a female editor, she listed the prominent abolitionist Samuel Ringgold Ward as publisher and abbreviated her own name.

The Provincial Freeman promoted Black independence, anti-slavery and emigration to Canada. Shadd became the first woman to speak at a national African-American convention, and the paper was the leading voice of Black Canadian communities until it ran out of money at the end of the decade.

During the Civil War, at Martin Delany's invitation, she became a recruiting officer for Black soldiers in Indiana. In 1869 she entered Howard University's law school, and graduated in 1883 at the age of 60, becoming one of the first Black women in the United States to earn a law degree. She also campaigned for women's suffrage and testified before the House Judiciary Committee, and died in Washington on 5 June 1893.