MARY ANN SHADD CARY Civil rights leader Born in 1823 , died in 1893 Enter your search terms Submit search form   Web gardenofpraise.com

Mary Ann Shadd was born in Wilmington, Delaware on October 9, 1823. Her father Abraham was a shoemaker. His father, Mary Ann's grandfather, was the son of a free black woman and a German soldier who served under General Braddock in 1755.

There were thirteen children in Mary Ann's family. She was the oldest. When she was ten years old the family moved to Pennsylvania where she attended a Quaker* school.

The Shadd home was a stop on the Underground Railroad* . They provided shelter for slaves who were running away to find freedom.

Mary Ann was light-colored and being mulatto* was an asset to her family both socially and financially.

After she graduated from the Quaker school she began a teaching career instructing black children.

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.

The passage of the Fugitive* Slave Act in 1850 was to help slave owners regain control of their runaway slaves. Many slaves lived in fear of being returned to their masters and moved to Canada to get beyond the reach of the law.

In 1852 she wrote A Plea for Emigration* or notes on Canada West . Canada had abolished slavery in 1833. Mary Ann took her own advice, moved to Canada, and began to teach there.

In 1854 she teamed up with a minister, Samuel Ward, to publish a newspaper caller the Provincial* Freeman. Her purpose of the paper was to support the fugitive slaves and to urge blacks both slave and free to come to Canada where Mary Ann felt they had greater safety and more opportunities to advance.

She was the first black woman to edit a newspaper. She wrote in one article that she had "broken the editorial ice".

Because Mary Ann's writings were so harsh and abrasive, she made a lot of enemies. She turned the paper over for a while to a minister named William P. Newman. She thought it would prosper better without her leadership.

When she was thirty-two years old she married Thomas Cary of Toronto. He was a barber who owned his own business. He had been married before and had three children. Five days after they married she left on a fund raising trip. She would be away from her husband and children for extended periods of time. She moved to Chatham, Ontario which was 180 miles away. Two years later Thomas moved to be with her.

She and Thomas had two children, Sarah and Linton. Unfortunately, her husband died shortly before Linton was born, and she was left with a 3-year-old, a newborn, and three teen-agers to raise by herself.

She returned to the United States and became a recruiter of black soldiers for the union army.

In 1869, when her youngest child was nine years old, she enrolled in law school at the Washington University. There were 46 students in this first class at the university. In addition to Mary Ann the student body included her 26-year-old brother Abraham. He was twenty years younger than his sister. She went to the university at night and taught school during the day.

Thirteen years later she 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.

Cary was held in high regard by Frederick Douglass, and she worked with Susan B. Anthony to obtain the right to vote for women.

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."

Her daughter Sarah wrote an essay about her which is published in a book called Homespun* Heroines and Other Women of Distinction.

Some of the facts in this story were taken from a paper called
Mary Ann Shadd Cary - A Biographical Sketch of a Rebel (PDF)
written by Shamina Sneed at Stanford Law School April 5, 2002

Mary Ann Shadd Cary National Women's Hall of Fame Timeline Mary Ann Shadd at Stanford edu Homespun Heroines and Other Women of Distinction a a book by Hallie Quinn Brown (Look for Mrs. Mary Ann Shadd Cary.) University of Detroit Mercy Black Abolitionist Archive articles and speeches by Mary Ann Shadd (Go to "Open File" and when you get to the image, left-mouse click to enlarge it.) Provincial Freeman about Shadd's newspaper Mary Ann Shadd Black History Pages Mary Ann Shadd, Pushing the Boundaries UNESCO.org Civil War Women Mary Ann Shadd Demanding Justice excerpts from the book at Google books Mary Ann Shadd Cary,The Black Press and Protest in the Nineteenth Century by Jane Rhodes at Google Books Mary Ann Shadd from SNN student magazine Mary Ann Shadd House Breaking the Ice a film about Mary Ann Shadd The Black Voice News (You may want to increase the text size here.) On the Edge of Freedom: Free Black Communities, Archaeology, and the Underground Railroad Abstract, doctoral dissertation by Cheryl Janifer LaRoche presented at University of Maryland 2004

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From Word Central's Student Dictionary
by Merriam - Webster
(Pronunciation note: the schwa sound is shown by &)

Quaker
Pronunciation: kwA-kr
Function: noun
a member of a Christian group that stresses Inner Light,
rejects sacraments and an ordained ministry, and opposes war

mulatto
Pronunciation: m(yoo)-LAT-o
Function: noun
1 : a person with one black and one white parent
2 : a person of mixed white and black descent

Underground Railroad
Function: noun
a system of cooperation in the U.S. before 1863
by which slaves were secretly helped to reach the North or Canada

fugitive
Pronunciation: FYOO-jt-iv
a person who runs away or tries to escape;

provincial
Pronunciation: pr&-VIN-ch&l
of, relating to, or coming from a province

eccentric
Pronunciation: ik-SEN-trik, ek-
Function: adjective
1 acting or thinking in an unusual way such as an eccentric person
2. not of the usual or normal kind as eccentric behavior

homespun
Pronunciation: home-spn
Function: adjective
not worldly : simple as in homespun ideas

emigration
Pronunciation: em-&-GRA-sh&n
Function: noun
leaving a country or region to live elsewhere

Biographies in this Series

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	James Monroe 5th U.S. President	Andrew Jackson 7th U.S. President	Abraham Lincoln 16th U.S.President
	Franklin D. Roosevelt 32nd U.S. President	John F. Kennedy 35th U.S. President	James Madison 4th U.S. President
	Theodore Roosevelt 26th U.S. President
American Patriots	Benjamin Franklin patriot and statesman	Francis Scott Key Star Spangled Banner	Deborah Sampson woman soldier in the Revolutionary War
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Women who made a difference	Clara Barton founder of the Red Cross	Helen Keller overcame blindness & deafness	Florence Nightingale founder of nursing profession
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Composers	Beethoven composer
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