Shadd Business Centre adopted its name from its initial location at Shadd Academy in 1991. Shadd Academy was named after Mary Ann Shadd Cary, who was born a free black woman in Wilmington Delaware. An advocate of women’s rights and the abolition of slavery, Mary Ann Shadd was the first African-American in North America to edit a weekly newspaper-- the Provincial Freeman. In 1883, Ms. Shadd was awarded her L.L.Ba. from Howard University Law School. She embarked on her legal career and practiced until her death on June 5, 1893. As an educator, abolitionist, editor, attorney and feminist, she dedicated her life to improving the quality of life for everyone – black and white, male and female.
It is an honor for Shadd Business Centre to continue to carry the name of such a determined advocate who showed, by her example, the importance of pursuing personal goals for the betterment of society.
Mary Ann Shadd
When the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 in the United States threatened to return free northern blacks and escaped slaves to bondage, Shadd and her brother Isaac moved to Canada and settled in Windsor, Ontario. In Windsor, she founded a racially integrated school with the support of the American Missionary Association. Shadd's support for racial integration embroiled her in a public dispute with Henry Bibb, the established leader in the black community in Canada. Bibb's newspaper, The Voice of the Fugitive, attacked Shadd's ideas and character, leading Shadd to found The Provincial Freeman newspaper in 1853, along with Samuel Ringgold Ward. The paper quickly folded, but Shadd and Ward revived it a year later from an office in King Street, Toronto. The paper continued to be published until 1859 promoting temperance, moral reform, civil rights and black self-help while attacking the racial discrimination blacks faced within North America. It was one of the longest published black newspapers until the Civil War.
Shadd believed that separate churches, schools and communities for blacks would ultimately undermine the search for freedom. She campaigned for equality and integration for black people, making public speeches and addressing issues of abolition and other reforms. Eventually, many of her family members, including her father and sisters, joined her in Canada.
In 1856, she married Thomas F. Cary, a barber from Toronto who was involved with the newspaper. They had two children, Sarah and Linton, and lived in Chatham, Ontario, where she continued to work on her newspaper and teach school. In 1858, John Brown held a secret "convention" at the home of her brother Isaac. In 1861, she published Voice from Harper's Ferry, a tribute to Brown's unsuccessful raid.
After her husband died in 1861, Shadd Cary and her children returned to the United States. During the Civil War, she served as a recruiting officer to enlist black volunteers for the Union Army in the state of Indiana. After the Civil War, she taught in black schools in Wilmington, before moving to Washington, D.C., where she taught in public schools and attended Howard University Law School. She graduated as a lawyer in 1883, becoming only the second black woman in the United States to earn a law degree. She wrote for the newspapers National Era and The People's Advocate.
Shadd Cary joined the National Woman's Suffrage Association, working alongside Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton for women's suffrage, testifying before the Judiciary Committee of the House of Representatives and becoming the first black woman to cast a vote in a national election.
She died in Washington, D.C., in 1893.
