Running head:

Head: Equality for all

Subhead: As a free woman at the turn of the century, "mulatto" journalist Mary Ann Shadd Cary waged a fifty year struggle for racial integration, abolition of slavery and gender equality

in Mary Ann Shadd Cary - The Black Press and Protest in the Nineteenth Century, (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998, 284p.)

By Barbara M. Freeman

"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."

This was the advice of Mary Ann Shadd Cary, an African-American journalist and editor who fought for racial integration and women's rights in both Canada and United States from the 1840s to the 1890s. Ironically, she wrote these words at a time when ge nder discrimination forced her to temporarily vacate the editor’s chair of her own newspaper, the Provincial Freeman, in Canada West. It was only one of the many challenges that she faced over her long, arduous working life. Her story is told in Mary Ann Shadd Cary - The Black Press and Protest in the Nineteenth Century.

In this book, author Jane Rhodes has produced a fascinating, thoroughly researched and engaging study of a very courageous woman who played a significant role in fostering black journalism in Canada, and racial and gender equality on both sides of the border. Mary Ann Shadd Cary fought for integration at a time when African-American slaves were fleeing to Canada via the Underground Railroad. Born in Delaware and trained as a teacher, she moved to Canada as a young woman, believing that this country hel d out far more opportunities and freedoms for black people than did the United States. As a freeborn "mulatto" woman, she used her fairer skin, her progressive Quaker education, her substantial writing and rhetorical skills, and her sharp mind to the best advantage she could for the good of the black community. As Rhodes points out, well-educated, black women like Shadd Cary were expected to sit quietly at home and take care of their families, much like their white Victorian counterparts. But, despite a b rief but happy marriage that produced two children, the determined social reformer had little time for domesticity.

Rhodes, who teaches about race, gender and media history at the University of California, presents the character and life of Shadd Cary insightfully and unsentimentally. She devotes substantial chapters to her sojourn in Canada West in the 1850s, where she became the first African-American woman to edit a newspaper. The Provincial Freeman was published at different stages out of Chatham, Windsor and Toronto from 1853 to 1860. A four-page weekly broadsheet, it provided a platform from which Shadd Cary and her associates could fight for the abolition of slavery in the U.S., black emigration to Canada, and racial integration in both countries.

As with most small newspapers of the period, the Freeman struggled with financial problems, a small literate audience, and inter-community rivalries. In this case, there was also gender prejudice directed against its woman editor. At one point, Shadd Cary left the publishing and editing to her male associates, and spent months on the road in Canada and the United States, trying to raise money and win subscribers to keep the publication alive. That she succeeded for seven very tough years, when m any other newspapers failed early, testifies to her tenacity and commitment.

Shadd Cary was not only a determined editor and newspaper proprietor, but an investigative, muckraking journalist who dared to challenge black male leaders, well-meaning white sympathizers and the survival strategies of her own community. At the time, black people in Canada were divided over how best to support the American refugees who fled over the border. Shadd Cary was determined that they would become self-sufficient as soon as possible, and integrate with white society, rather than rely on larges s of better-off blacks and white people, and cut themselves off in segregated communities. She stated these beliefs directly and often, both in her newspaper and on the lecture circuit.

As Rhodes carefully points out, Shadd Cary was no diplomat, and her outspokenness earned her many enemies within both the black and white communities of Southwestern Ontario and, later, after the Freeman folded, in Detroit and Washington. The au thor’s description of race and gender politics in that era is really absorbing. Shadd Cary involved herself in abolition and integration, suffrage and temperance, and the difficulties this early feminist encountered while negotiating her way through these complementary and competing social reform movements have a familiar ring today.

During the American Civil War, Shadd Cary helped recruit black soldiers from both sides of the border. After the war ended, she returned into the United States where she vainly hoped, as did other blacks, that emancipation would bring new and lasting o pportunities in politics and the professions. Shut out of journalism because of racial and gender bias, she worked as a teacher and school principal in black schools. Soon, she had set her sights on a law degree, which she finally earned later in life at the age of 60 from Howard University in Washington.

Throughout her long career, Shadd Cary fought valiantly for equal rights for both blacks and women, witnessing some victories and the inevitable failures that entrenched discriminatory practices produced, despite the new legal freedoms African-American s gained after the Civil War. She never gave up her fight, and never made much money either, despite her credentials. She died at the age of 70, with an estate valued at the grand sum of $150. (IS THAT U.S DOLLARS?)

With her study of Shadd Cary, Jane Rhodes has established herself as a fine journalism historian. In the best tradition of the painstaking academic researcher (or investigative journalist), Rhodes combed through hundreds of archived documents, earl y newspapers and other published sources to unearth her subject's substantial contribution to racial and gender equality in 19th century North America. Rhodes’ particular strength as a writer is her ability to place Shadd Cary completely in the historical context of her time, while bringing her to life as a brave, fallible woman who helped establish a tradition that succeeding generations of black journalists and editors have built on.

Contents

Book review Mary Ann Shadd Cary waged a fifty year in the nineteenth century for racial and gender equality

Pull quotes

Shadd Cary involved herself in abolition and integration, suffrage and temperance, and the difficulties this early feminist encountered.