Readings About Mary Ann Shadd Cary
Shadd: The Life and Times of Mary Shadd Cary by Call Number: LA2325.C34 B4Publication Date: 01-01-1977
Demanding Justice by
Mary Ann Shadd Cary spent her entire lifetime fighting for justice and equality for African Americans. Born a free African American in the 1820s, Cary started schools for black children and wrote books and articles. She was also the first black woman to publish a weekly newspaper and to enter law school. Never afraid of offending anyone, Cary demanded justice for herself and for her fellow African Americans.
Call Number: BC336fISBN: 9781575051772Publication Date: 2003-01-01
Black Women's Intellectual Traditions by
A new edition of a landmark work on Black women's intellectual traditions. An astonishing wealth of literary and intellectual work by nineteenth-century black women is being rediscovered and restored to print. In Kristin B. Waters's and Carol B. Conaway's landmark edited collection, Black Women's Intellectual Traditions, sophisticated commentary on this rich body of work chronicles a powerful and interwoven legacy of activism based on social and political theories that helped shape the history of North America. Black Women's Intellectual Traditions meticulously reclaims this American legacy, providing a collection of critical analyses of the primary sources and their vital traditions. Written by leading scholars, this book is particularly powerful in its exploration of the pioneering thought and action of the nineteenth-century Black woman lecturer and essayist Maria W. Stewart, abolitionist Sojourner Truth, novelist and poet Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, educator Anna Julia Cooper, newspaper editor Mary Ann Shadd Cary, and activist Ida B. Wells. The volume will interest scholars and readers of African American and women's studies, history, rhetoric, literature, poetry, sociology, political science, and philosophy. This updated edition features a new preface by the editors in light of current scholarship.
ISBN: 9781684581412Publication Date: 2022-11-21
Mary Ann Shadd Cary by
" . . . an extraordinary and richly contextualized biography that highlights the engagement and agency of a little-known African American activist who challenged the obstacles gender and race posed for her." ?The Journal of American History "Rhodes provides a well-researched, balanced, clearly written assessment of the extraordinary life of this trailblazing African American feminist and reformer." ?Choice "In this book we see how a courageous and pugnacious journalist-activist fought arduously to attain freedom from male dominance and establish a model for future feminists." ?Quill & Scroll "Jane Rhodes' wonderful biography of Mary Ann Shadd Cary . . . is an insightful and moving portrait of a determined and resourceful Black woman who put all she had into ending slavery and securing full human rights for her people." ?Darlene Clark Hine "This is an excellent book. Not only does it illuminate the details of the life of a little-known journalist of considerable accomplishment, but it also contributes to the body of knowledge relevant to numerous other subject areas." ?Rodger Streitmatter Mary Ann Shadd Cary was a courageous and outspoken 19th-century African American who used the press and public speaking to fight slavery and oppression in the United States and Canada. Her life provides a window on the free black experience, emergent black nationalisms, African Americans' gender ideologies, and the formation of a black public sphere.
Call Number: E185.97.C32 R48 1998ISBN: 9780253213501Publication Date: 1999-07-22
Additional Readings / References
Mary Ann Shadd Cary (1823-1893)
Biography
Mary Ann Shadd Cary was an active abolitionist and the first female African American newspaper editor in North America.
Mary Ann Shadd was born October 9, 1823 in Wilmington, Delaware. She was the eldest of 13 children born to Abraham Doras (A.D.) Shadd and Harriet Burton Parnell, two free Black people. Mary Ann was educated at a Quaker school in Pennsylvania and later started her own school for Black people. After the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 was passed, Mary Ann and her brother, Isaac, moved to Windsor, Ontario (right across the border from Detroit, Michigan). While there, she founded a racially-integrated school with the support of the American Missionary Association. While there, she published a pamphlet called, "Notes on Canada West". The pamphlet was a plea for Black emigration to Canada -- detailing the benefits and opportunities that Black people could leverage if the moved north. She, also, ran an anti-slavery newspaper called The Provincial Freeman, which made her the first female editor in North America. Isaac Shadd, Mary Ann's brother, managed the business affairs of the newspaper, and would go on to host gatherings at his home to plan the raid on Harper's Ferry.
In 1855, Mary Ann attempted to participate in the Philadelphia Colored Convention but, due to her advocacy of emigration, she was deemed a controversial figure. She was narrowly admitted by a margin of 15 votes. Even though she gave such a great speech advocating for emigration that the delegates voted to give her ten more minutes, her speech was stricken from the record likely because she was a woman.
In 1856, Mary Ann Shadd married Thomas F. Cary -- a barber who was involved with her newspaper. She had two children -- a daughter named Sarah and a son named Linton. After her husband died in 1860, Mary Ann and her children moved to the United States. During the Civil War, Shadd Cary served as a recruiting officer to enlist Black volunteers for the Union Army in the state of Indiana. After the War, she taught in Black schools in Wilmington before moving to Washington, D.C. In D.C., she taught in public schools before the first woman to enter Howard University School of Law. She was the first Black woman to obtain a law degree from Howard (in 1883, at age 60) and among the first women to obtain a law degree nationwide.
Mary Ann Shadd Cary joined the National Woman Suffrage Association, working alongside Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton for women's suffrage and testifying before the Judiciary Committee of the House of Representatives. She was the first Black women to vote in a national election. She died in Washington D.C. on June 5, 1893 from stomach cancer.
Mary Ann Shadd Cary's former residence in the U Street Corridor was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1976. She was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame in 1998. She was also honored in Canada by being designated a Person of National Historic Significance. The New York Times published a belated obituary for her in 2018.