A Right to Freedom

Mary Ann Shadd Cary (1823-1893)

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

Mary Ann Shadd was born a free black on October 9, 1823, in Wilmington, Delaware; the eldest of thirteen children.  Her father, Abraham Shadd, was a key figure in the Underground Railroad and a subscription agent for William Lloyd Garrison's Liberator. As a child, Mary Ann witnessed slavery and the dedication her family had to freeing slaves.

When Mary was ten, the Shadd family moved to West Chester, Pennsylvania where she attended a Quaker School for the next six years, and in 1850, when the Fugitive Slave Law was passed, Mary and her brother, Isaac, emigrated to Canada with the rest of the American Black exodus.  She founded a racially integrated school here with the support of the American Missionary Association and joined abolitionists Mary and Henry Bibb to fight against exploitive antislavery agents known as "begging agents."   She often criticized Black Southern ministries and other Blacks who did not teach intellectual growth and self reliance, and in 1852 wrote "Notes on Canada West" which pursuaded American Blacks to head North. In 1853 Shadd established the Provincial Freeman, a weekly paper designed to cover the lives of Canadian blacks and promote the cause of black refugees to Canada. The first black woman in North America to edit a weekly paper, Shadd complemented her active anti-slavery efforts and editorials with articles on women and their contributions. At a time when it was still uncommon for women to speak in public, she lectured frequently in the United States against slavery and for black emigration to Canada; but despite her efforts, the Provincial Freeman fell victim to the economic depression of the day and ceased publication in 1858.

In 1856, Mary Shadd married a Toronto barber, Thomas F. Cary, who was also involved with the paper; and the couple continued to befriend fugitive slaves.  In 1858, John Brown held a secret "convention" at the home of Mary's brother Issac, which renewed her interest in the anti-slavery cause. Her husband died in 1860; and though her newspaper was gone, she continued to write and published Voice from Harper's Ferry, a tribute to Brown's unsuccessful raid. During the Civil War, she was appointed a Recruiting Officer for the Union Army and moved to Washington, DC, with her daughter Elizabeth where she taught for 15 years; both at public schools and Howard University. She continued to lecture, but like Harriet Tubman, now focused her attention on women's rights and the suffrage movement. She also studied law at Howard University and graduated in June 1883; becoming one of the first black female lawyers in the country. Mary Ann Shadd Cary died in 1893, fighting for Civil Rights to the end.

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