Birthday of Mary Ann Camberton Shadd Cary

On this day in 1823 Mary Ann Shadd educator, publisher, lawyer, and abolitionist was born in Wilmington Delaware. Her parents were free Black abolitionists active in the movement and used their home as a stop on the Underground Railroad. From a young age, Mary Ann was involved with her parents in educating young Black children and she wrote for Black newspapers. Notably, she wrote a letter to Frederick Douglass in which she critiqued the tendency to be focused on much talk, but little action. Following the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, Mary Ann and her family immigrated to Canada. In 1853 she started The Provincial Freeman, a newspaper focused on Black issues in Canada and anti-slavery work. She encouraged Black Americans to relocate to Canada to fight the institution of slavery from there. Following the Civil War she returned to the United States where she graduated law school and taught for the remainder of her career. In additional to her many contributions in the fight against slavery, she was the first black woman publisher in North America, the first woman publisher in Canada, and the second black woman to attend law school in the United States.