Political activist and journalist Mary Ann Shadd Cary had the strength and conviction to stand up for her beliefs and let nothing stand in her way.

Cary was born a free black American to an elite family in Wilmington, Del., before the Civil War.

Well educated and armed with sharp communication skills, Cary (1823-93) blazed many trails. She was the first black American woman to publish and edit a newspaper in North America.

She also was one of the first black American women to attend law school. She became an early leader in the civil rights and women rights movements — and in 1880 organized the Colored Women's Progressive Franchise Association.

Determined to achieve her goals, Cary broke down most barriers she faced. She wouldn't tolerate racial or gender prejudice.

"She had to be a steel magnolia," said Kurt Schmoke, a former mayor of Baltimore and now dean of Howard University School of Law, where Cary received her law degree. "She had to be very strong and very committed to achieve what she did."

As a lawyer, she worked for women's suffrage and encouraged others to follow her.

"Ultimately, it was her personality characteristics of determination, frankness and wit that gained her recognition during her lifetime," Shamina Sneed of Stanford Law School wrote in her 2002 paper "Mary Ann Shadd Cary: A Biographical Sketch of the Rebel."

Cary had many role models that shaped her attitude and beliefs. Her father, Abraham Shadd, was active in abolitionist and political groups.

She attended a school for Quakers, staunchly anti-slavery. "At home and in school Mary Ann was taught to take the moral high ground in questions of politics and race," Jane Rhodes wrote in "Mary Ann Shadd Cary: The Black Press and Protest in the Nineteenth Century."

Cary learned that if she wanted to promote social change she had to stick to her beliefs, even if that cost her personally, Rhodes wrote.

Cary was one of the few black women of her day to have a good enough education to select a profession. She chose teaching.

Through her teaching, she learned to be a great orator. And through her determination to air her views, she became a prolific writer and author. Cary used those skills to fight slavery and oppression.

Through her writing, Cary lashed out against those who took advantage of free blacks, whom she exhorted to be self-reliant.

She would often use a sharp tone that struck a chord with readers.

Take the letter she wrote abolitionist leader Frederick Douglass in 1849 that appeared in his North Star newspaper. She wrote it in response to Douglass' call for suggestions on how to improve the poor conditions of free blacks in the North.

"We have been holding conventions for years — have been assembling together and whining over our difficulties. . . . But it really (seems) that we have made but little progress, considering our resolves," she wrote, adding, "We should do more and talk less."

That's exactly what Cary did.

In 1850, the Fugitive Slave Act passed Congress. California was admitted as a free state, but Texas was allowed slavery. The law ended slave trading in Washington, D.C., but runaway slaves could be captured and returned to their masters.

Free blacks feared for their freedom. Infuriated, Cary left the country. She moved to Windsor, Ontario, in 1851 and founded a school there.

Soon she wrote "Notes of Canada West," a book in which she urged blacks to move to the country.

She asserted that free blacks who stayed in America were waiting for "a powerful miracle for the overthrow of slavery," Rhodes wrote. "The little book catapulted Cary into the public arena and into the heart of the emigrationist struggle."

Meanwhile, Cary's school was dying for lack of funds. So she looked for another voice: a newspaper to compete with Henry Bibb's Canadian paper aimed at blacks.

Cary asked black abolitionist and newspaper publisher Samuel Ringgold Ward to join her editorial group. Their newspaper would be modeled after one published by the Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society.

On March 24, 1853, the day after Cary closed her school, she published the first issue of the Provincial Freeman. She aimed to represent Canada's black population as independent freemen, not the oppressed fugitives portrayed by Bibb's paper, Rhodes wrote.

Cary was a shrewd, conservative businesswoman. The first issue was a prototype. She waited until enough subscribers promised to pay $1.50 a year before she published it weekly. She and Ward wanted a solid capital base.

Cary was also resourceful.

In the summer of 1853 she moved the Freeman to Toronto, the province's biggest city, which had integrated schools and churches and successful black businesses — unlike Windsor.

That year, Bibb's newspaper went under — and Cary moved quickly to fill the void, Rhodes wrote.

By 1854, the Freeman was rolling off the press regularly. Cary was editor and publisher, pushing the motto "Self-reliance is the True Road to Independence."

She proclaimed in the paper that she had "broken the editorial ice."

Despite her accomplishments, Cary knew she was up against gender discrimination. So at first she placed men in posts of authority at the Freeman while she stayed in the background.

And she continued to lecture and travel to raise funds for the paper. As the Freeman's spokeswoman, she could no longer hide her gender. She reveled in her role by writing regular accounts of her travels.

The Freeman focused on the problems of racial discrimination and segregation. Keeping with the paper's aim to instill self-reliance, Cary urged fugitives to quit begging.

She regularly published articles and letters on women's rights.

The Freeman's end came in 1859. Cary tried to rally financial support, but it wasn't enough.

After the paper's demise and the death of her husband, Thomas, Cary returned to the U.S. around the start of the Civil War. By 1864, she was in Washington, D.C., recruiting blacks for the Union Army.

When the fighting ended, Cary moved to Detroit and returned to teaching.

She spent the rest of her life working for the advancement of black Americans and died of stomach cancer in 1893.


BY MARILYN MUCH