Mary Ann Shadd Cary

Cary, Mary Ann Shadd (1823–1893), U.S. teacher and journalist, first North American black woman to establish and edit a weekly newspaper. Born to free parents, she taught in and established schools for blacks in Delaware, Pennsylvania, and New York (1839–51). After the U.S. Congress passed the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, allowing for the return of slaves who had escaped into another state, she began actively working to help slaves who had escaped to Canada. In 1851 she moved to Windsor, Ont., where she helped found the Provincial Freeman, a weekly newspaper for blacks in Canada. She moved to Washington, D.C. (1869), where she taught school and received a law degree from Howard University. She was active in the suffrage movement.