Mary Ann Shadd

It was March 24, 1853, in Canada West.

That day, the first issue of a new newspaper appeared: The Provincial Freeman. It had a motto.

The name of Samuel Ringgold Ward appeared as editor. His name was meant to draw subscribers.

But the real force behind the paper was a woman of twenty-nine. Her name was Mary Ann Shadd.

She was born free, on October 9, 1823, in Wilmington, Delaware.

Her father, Abraham Doras Shadd, was a shoemaker. He was one of the leaders of the town's free Black community. Her mother's name was Harriet Parnell.

The family home was a stop on the Underground Railroad.

Mary Ann studied at a Quaker school in West Chester, Pennsylvania.

At sixteen, she returned to Wilmington and opened a school for Black children. For more than ten years, she taught, from one town to the next: Wilmington, New York, Trenton, West Chester, Norristown.

In 1850, the US Congress passed the Fugitive Slave Act. Many left for Canada.

In the fall of 1851, Mary Ann Shadd followed them. She settled in Windsor, Canada West.

There, she opened an integrated school for the children of refugees.

In 1852, she published A Plea for Emigration. In it, she described Canada West and invited Black Americans to come and settle there.

Then came the newspaper. In its pages, she urged Black Americans to come and settle freely in Canada, and to rely on their own strength.

In March 1854, the paper resumed in Toronto. In 1855, it moved to Chatham.

She was the first Black woman in North America to publish and edit a newspaper.

In 1856, she married Thomas F. Cary, in St. Catharines. He died in 1860. The paper, for its part, stopped publishing around 1859 or 1860.

In late 1863, during the American Civil War, at Martin Delany's invitation, she recruited Black soldiers.

In 1881, she came back briefly to Canada for a rally in favour of suffrage.

In 1883, she earned a law degree from Howard University.

She died on June 5, 1893, in Washington.

In 1994, Canada designated her a National Historic Person. In January 2024, Canada Post issued a stamp in her honour.

Her motto spoke of self-reliance. And yet a school, a newspaper, a community of refugees, these are built by many hands.

This life, in which each person's freedom was built with others, echoes Ubuntu, without being the same thing.

What remains of her is the image of a page printed in Canada West, in 1853. And those few words about the road to independence.