Mary Ann Shadd

Mary Ann Shadd (born October 9, 1823, Wilmington, Delaware, U.S.—died June 5, 1893, Washington, D.C.) was an American educator, publisher, and abolitionist who was the first Black female newspaper publisher in North America. She founded The Provincial Freeman in Canada in 1853.

Early years and move to Canada West

Mary Ann Shadd was born to free parents in Delaware, a slave state, and was the eldest of 13 children. She was educated by Quakers and later taught throughout the northeastern United States, including New York City. Following in the footsteps of her activist parents, whose home was a safe house (or “station”) on the Underground Railroad, Shadd pursued community activism upon settling in Canada.

On September 10, 1851, at St. Lawrence Hall in Toronto, Shadd attended the first North American Convention of Coloured Freemen held outside of the United States. The event was presided over by Henry Bibb, Josiah Henson, and J.T. Fisher, as well as other prominent figures, and was attended by hundreds of Black community leaders from all over Canada, the northern United States, and England. Many convention delegates encouraged enslaved Americans and refugees from enslavement to enter Canada. The year before, the United States had passed the second of that country’s two Fugitive Slave Acts, which allowed slave owners to recapture escaped enslaved persons in states where enslavement had been abolished.

At the convention, Henry and Mary Bibb, activists and publishers of the newspaper Voice of the Fugitive, met and persuaded Shadd to take a teaching position near their home in Sandwich (now Windsor), Canada West. After settling there in 1851, Shadd set up a racially integrated school for Black refugees that was open to all who could afford to attend (education was not publicly provided at that time). The school was opened with financial support from the American Missionary Association.

Shadd wrote educational booklets that outlined the advantages of Canada for settlers moving north, including A Plea for Emigration; or, Notes of Canada West (1852). About this time, Shadd, who opposed segregated schools for Black children, engaged in a heated debate with Henry and Mary Bibb, who favoured segregation. The dispute informed many editorials written by the Bibbs and Shadd in Voice of the Fugitive. As a result of the public dispute, Shadd lost funding from the American Missionary Association for her school.

The Provincial Freeman

Roughly 20,000 American-born Black persons—born free or enslaved—moved or escaped to Canada between 1800 and 1865 (the end of the American Civil War). In 1850 over 35,000 Black persons lived in Canada West. To promote immigration to Canada, Shadd publicized the successes of Black persons living in freedom in Canada through The Provincial Freeman, a weekly newspaper first printed on 24 March 1853. This made Shadd, who was one of the first female journalists in Canada, the first Black woman in Canada and North America to publish a newspaper. “Self-Reliance Is the True Road to Independence” was the paper’s motto.

Coedited by Samuel Ringgold Ward, a well-known public speaker and escaped enslaved person living in Toronto, the paper was published from Windsor (1853–54), Toronto (1854–55), and Chatham (1855–57). While Ward was listed as editor on the paper’s masthead, Shadd did not list her own name or take any credit for articles written by her, thus concealing the paper’s female editorship. By 1860 the paper had succumbed to financial pressure and folded.

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Later years and return to the United States

After spending the first few years of the American Civil War as a schoolteacher in Chatham, Shadd returned to the United States and began work as a recruitment agent for the Union Army. Later, she moved to Washington, D.C., where she worked as a teacher. Years after, Shadd pursued law studies at Howard University and in 1883 became one of the first Black women to complete a law degree.

In 1994 Shadd was designated a Person of National Historic Significance in Canada.

The original version of this entry was published byThe Canadian Encyclopedia.