WAR AGAINST 'ISMS':
by: Todd Steven Burroughs
"Miss Shadd has said and written many things which we think will add nothing to her credit as a lady."
That sentence was published in 1852 in The Voice of the Fugitive, a newspaper for free Blacks escaping to Canada during slavery. Its publisher, Henry Bibb, was in disagreement with Mary Ann Camberton Shadd (1823-1893) because of her outspokenness.
Shadd was a teacher and a leader in the Black emigration movement. The same year she had published a pamphlet, "A Plea For Emigration, or Notes of Canada West," that had criticized Bibb's organization, the Refugee Home Society, because it was funded by whites and, she claimed, sold land to Blacks at a higher price than it paid. Her ongoing disputes with Bibb, himself a fugitive slave, resulted in his journalistic attack.
It wouldn't be the first time she had to fight sexism within the Black community.
Shadd, who lost her teaching position as a result of the public dispute, responded by creating her own voice. It was called The Provincial Freeman.
But she had to create it with two males two male editors listed in the masthead--Rev. Alexander McArthur and Samuel Ringgold Ward, two well-known race leaders. Writes historian Rodger Streitmatter: "Ward and McArthur were listed as the editors, even though both men were far removed from Windsor [where Shadd lived and worked]. It was left to Shadd to write the articles and print the four-page newspaper." When The Freeman went weekly in 1854, a year after its founding, she disguised her name as "publishing agent" by using her first two initials--a longtime publishing practice women have used to this day.
Shadd traveled the lecture circuit in Canada and America to sell emigration and her newspaper, but "[n]either her opinions or her gender were universally welcomed," writes Streitmatter. "At the eleventh Colored National Convention in Philadelphia, she had to win a debate with male convention leaders before she was allowed to speak publicly."
Shadd finally dropped Ward and McArthur's names from the masthead in 1854 and identified herself in print using her full name. She also hired her sister, Amelia, to help her edit The Freeman. Public outrage was so great Shadd had to announce her resignation the following year.
But she wrote inspiring words for her fellow sisters: "To Colored women, we have a word--we have 'broken the Editorial ice,' whether willingly or not, for your class in America; so go to Editing, as many of you as are willing, and able, and as soon as you may, if you think you are ready."
Shadd married, but she continued writing for The Freeman and public speaking. Eventually, she earned a law degree from Howard University. None of it was easy for a Black woman in the mid-19th century. Which is why Shadd Cary was up for all of it.
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