An ongoing illustrative history study
This piece originally posted 9/17/2020
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"The fact that somebody is displeased is no evidence that we are wrong."
Mary Ann Shadd Cary was born a free person of color in 1823 Delaware; the family later moved to Pennsylvania. Activism was very much in her family's lifeblood: her parents both helped with the Underground Railroad, using their home as a refuge for fugitive slaves. Unfortunately passage of the Fugitive Slave Act (1850) prompted the family's decision to move to Canada, where Mary furthered her education in ways she could not in the U.S., and from there she pursued efforts to create free black settlements in Canada, promoted integrated schools, and --perhaps most significantly-- created and published a newspaper called The Provincial Freeman, which saw extensive circulation not only in Canada but also in the States. This achievement also made her the first female editor in North America.
In 1860 Cary returned to the U.S. to help in the war effort, working as a recruiting officer for the Union Army in Indiana, where she encouraged African Americans to join the fight against the Confederacy and against slavery. After the Civil War, Cary (now a widow and a mother to two children) moved back to Delaware, and then to Washington, D.C. She graduated from Howard University law school at the age of 60 (1883), becoming only the second black woman in the United States to earn a law degree. But she was far from done: in her later years she allied herself with suffrage leaders like Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, testifying before the Judiciary Committee of the House of Representatives, and becoming the first African-American woman to cast a vote in a national election.
Learn more at: https://www.biography.com/activist/mary-ann-shadd-cary
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