Year Honored: 1997

Birth: 1823 - 1893

Born in: Wilmington, Delaware

Biography

The Suffragist Mary Ann Shad Cary was born in Wilmington, Delaware in 1823 as the oldest of 13 children to freeman Abraham Shadd, a leader in the African American Community, a prominent supporter of abolition, and an active member of the Underground Railroad. At age 10, Shadd moved his family to Pennsylvania so that his children could receive an education. Cary attended a Quaker Boarding School from then until age 16, when she left to teach.

Cary moved to Canada in the 1850s, as she believed the Canadian West offered the most opportunity for the black community. She also believed that “self-reliance s the true road to independence for blacks.” Though in Canada, she remained an active member of the Underground Railroad, even after the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 was passed. In 1854, Cary became the first African American newspaper publisher in North America with her publication of the ‘Provincial Freedman’, Canada’s first anti-slavery newspaper. During this time, Cary married Thomas J. Cary and the couple had two children. Thomas died in 1860.

In addition to publishing the ‘Provincial Freedman,’ Cary opened a school for black and white students and wrote and lectured on the importance of freedom. In 1855, she traveled to Pennsylvania to speak on Canadian Immigration at the Colored National Convention. At the outbreak of the Civil War, Cary returned to the United States to recruit soldiers for the Union.

After the Civil War was won, and freedom was assured for all blacks, Cary turned her attention to further activism and the suffrage movement. She moved to Washington D.C after the war and took up a leading role in the National Women’s Suffrage Association. In 1878, she spoke at the National Women’s Suffrage Association Convention, at the invitation of Lucretia Mott and Susan B. Anthony. She also testified before Congress in support of the 14th and 15th amendments, which defined citizenship and gave Black men the right to vote respectively, though she was rather critical of the 15th amendment as it lacked language around women. In 1874, she signed the petition presented to the House Judiciary Committee claiming a women’s right to legally vote. She was also the first woman to vote in a federal election.

In 1883, at the age of 60, Cary was the first woman to enroll in Howard University’s Law Department. Cary attended night classes and taught at a local school during the day. She was the first woman to graduate from the program, thus making her one of the first Black woman lawyers in the country.

Cary continued her activism for the Black Community as well, writing for the local African American newspaper ‘The New National Era;’ giving public speeches to encourage cooperation between Blacks; and founding the Colored Women’s Progressive Franchise Association. In 1885, she was the first woman invited to speak at the National Negro Convention. Frederick Douglas proclaimed her speech to be one of the most convincing at the convention and said “we do not know of her equal among the colored ladies of the United States.”
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Sources and Additional Readings

Cary, Mary Ann Shadd. National Women's Hall of Fame. (n.d.). Retrieved January 12, 2022, from https://www.womenofthehall.org/inductee/mary-ann-shadd-cary/

Davis, J. (2019, February 28). Mary Ann Shadd Cary: Lawyer, educator, suffragist. Mary Ann Shadd Cary: Lawyer, Educator, Suffragist | In Custodia Legis: Law Librarians of Congress. Retrieved January 12, 2022, from https://blogs.loc.gov/law/2019/02/mary-ann-shadd-cary-lawyer-educator-suffragist/

Rhodes, Jane. Mary Ann Shadd Cary: The Black Press and Protest in the Nineteenth Century. Bloomington: Indiana University, 1998.

Mary Ann Shadd Cary and the Provincial Freeman. (n.d.). Retrieved January 12, 2022, from http://www.math.buffalo.edu/~sww/0history/ProvincialFreeman.html

U.S. Department of the Interior. (n.d.). Aboard the Underground Railroad--Mary Ann Shadd cary house. National Parks Service. Retrieved January 12, 2022, from https://www.nps.gov/nr/travel/underground/dc2.htm

U.S. Department of the Interior. (n.d.). Mary Ann Shadd Cary (U.S. National Park Service). National Parks Service. Retrieved January 12, 2022, from https://www.nps.gov/people/mary-ann-shadd-cary.htm

Yee, Shirley J. “Finding A Place: Mary Ann Shadd Cary and the Dilemmas of Black Migration to Canada, 1850-1870.” Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies 18, No. 3 (1997): 1-16.