📰 Mary Ann Shadd

1823 to 1893 · Teacher, publisher, lawyer · The first Black woman publisher in North America.

The Story

Mary Ann Shadd was born free in 1823 in Wilmington, Delaware, the eldest of thirteen children. Her family moved to Canada West, now Ontario, where she taught school in Windsor. But teaching was not enough of a voice for her. In 1852 she published a pamphlet urging Black Americans to come to Canada, where she promised good farmland, work, and integrated schools.

Then she went further. On March 24, 1853, the first issue of her own weekly newspaper, the Provincial Freeman, came off the press. It was published in Windsor, Toronto, and Chatham over its run, and it made her the first Black woman publisher in North America, and the first woman publisher in Canada. The paper's motto was "Self-reliance is the true road to independence."

The conventions of the time would not let a woman's name stand on a masthead, so at first a man's name appeared as editor. She ran the paper anyway, and before long she claimed her role in print, saying she had "broke the Editorial Ice." The paper ran until the late 1850s, when the money ran out, as it does for so many good papers.

She did not stop there. She went on to study law at Howard University, graduating in 1883 at the age of 60, the second Black woman in the United States to earn a law degree, and she kept writing, teaching, and speaking for the rest of her life. Canada has since named her a Person of National Historic Significance.

Why She Matters

Before there were Canadian newspapers of every stripe, there was a woman in a small Ontario print shop who decided her community needed its own voice, and built it herself. Every independent Canadian paper since owes her a nod.

Sources: Wikipedia, National Endowment for the Humanities, EBSCO.

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