Imagine paving a path that no one else like you has forged. A path that fulfils your innate desire and creates a possible blueprint for others to emulate.
It takes both courage, acting despite fear, and creativity.
That desire for action comes from the fire of a calling that, once lit, needs to be answered. If not you, then who.
About 200 years ago, in 1823, such a fire was lit; Mary Ann Shadd Cary would become Canada’s first woman publisher and the first Black woman to run a newspaper in North America.
Before the Press
Before breaking barriers in publishing, she started in education by opening a racially integrated school in Windsor, Ontario in 1851.
With an emphasis on literacy, classical education, and civic responsibility, the school was opened to both boys and girls.
At a time when racial segregation was common on both sides of the border, her school represented one of the first integrated classrooms in pre-Confederation Canada.
Shadd’s commitment to justice transcended the classroom, and she used the press as a trumpet to promote education and the betterment of her community.
Put it in Writing
The Provincial Freeman, a weekly, anti-slavery newspaper, was published in 1853 and ran in Windsor, Toronto and Chatham.
It helped shape a political debate about freedom and settlement, giving a public voice to Black Canadians and women.
Knowing that gender expectations of that time may cause her readership to reject a woman at the helm, Shadd recruited the help of two men, a fellow Black abolitionist publisher and a White clergyman. Their names, Samuel Ringgold Ward and Rev. Alexander McArthur, appeared on the masthead though Shadd ran the paper.
In addition to general news and literature, the newspaper featured personal stories of people who pushed back against discrimination and advocated for fair treatment and self-education.
Order in the Court
Some of that pushback was on the legal system which permitted the very injustices Shadd and others were fighting.
Legislation like the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 was reminiscent of the colonial period; a period which encouraged legalized exploitation.
That legislation of 1850 would be the catalyst for Shadd and her family to move to Canada.
American by birth and Canadian by naturalization, Shadd’s interest in law would take her to Howard University’s school of law where she completed her LL.B degree at the approximate age of 60 – she was, again, among the first.
Recognition on Both Sides of the Border
More than a century after her death in 1893, her personal papers were added to the Canada Memory of the World Register by UNESCO’s Canadian committee in 2023.
Before that in 1976, Shadd’s former residence in Washington, DC, was declared a National Historic Landmark, and her hometown of Wilmington, Delaware named a post office in her honour in 2021.
Shadd’s life reminds us that progress comes from a lifetime of stubborn, strategic effort. It provides shoulders on which posterity can stand.
Conclusion
Her school, newspaper, and legal practice amplified the voices of the marginalized.
Her example teaches us to step up and take a stand, in both word and deed, against abuse and injustice. It’s a reminder that when you’re denied a key, perhaps you need to build your own door.
As the National Park Service notes, Shadd refused to be quiet. Maybe that’s what we need to be a ‘first’.✿