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MARY ANN SHADD CARY HAD MANY DREAMS.


SHE SOUGHT A BETTER LIFE FOR PEOPLE OF COLOR, EQUAL RIGHTS FOR ALL, REGARDLESS OF RACE OR GENDER, AND A WORLD WHERE WHITES AND BLACKS LIVED IN PERFECT INTEGRATION. BRASH AND DEFIANT, SHE CONFRONTED RACIAL AND GENDER PREJUDICE LIKE FEW OTHERS IN AMERICAN HISTORY.


Born to free blacks, Abraham and Harriet Shadd, in Wilmington, Del., in 1823, the fear- less Mary Ann Shadd Cary was the oldest of 13 children and the great-granddaughter of Hans Schad, a German mercenary who fought in the French and Indian War and married a free black woman. Her father, a shoemaker, became troubled after the founding of the African Colonization Society, whose purpose was to send black Americans back to Africa.


I


n addition to the Colonization Society, the enforcement of restrictive


black codes in the North had galva- nized free blacks to protest. National Negro Conventions began in 1830, and Abraham was the convention’s president in 1833. He also was one of six blacks who participated at the organizational meeting of the American Anti-Slavery Society that year.1 Abraham moved his family to


West Chester, Pennsylvania, an area dominated by friendly Quakers. In fact, the Shadd family was not alone among blacks moving to Chester County as racial tensions had height- ened in Delaware. With no schools in Wilmington for black females, the move made education available to all of the Shadd children. Not only free blacks fl ocked there


but also fugitive slaves. Hundreds came through and were aided by the Underground Railroad, for which Abraham was an agent.2


He also


prospered in business and purchased a farm and some real estate. 3 Mary Ann meanwhile grew into


a tall, slender woman with “bright sharp eyes,” as her contemporary, William Wells Brown, described her. At age 16, she began teaching in Wilmington. During the next 12 years, she taught in Trenton, N.J.; Norristown, Pa.; and New York City. As she matured, her strident nature began to manifest.4


MCCA.COM In 1848, she wrote a short tract,


“Hints to the Colored People of the North,” parts of which were pub- lished in Frederick Douglas', North Star. It lectured free blacks on how to improve their condition. T is was a time of great ferment in the antislav- ery movement. Not only did it lead to the growth of the Underground Railroad but to eff orts at political reform such as support for black male suff rage, for which Abraham was a leading spokesman. At the same time pro-slavery forces were retaliat- ing. Organized gangs in adjacent Lancaster County terrorized free blacks, and it was not uncommon for whites to forcibly enter the homes of blacks in search of fugitive slaves.5 A development that pushed many


free blacks to leave the U.S. was the passage of the second Fugitive Slave Law on September 18, 1850, whose provisions made it easier for slave catchers to retrieve fugitive slaves, and threatened the freedom of free blacks. A general climate of hysteria developed among blacks in the North. Many made a hasty pilgrim- age to Canada. It was the beginning of a mass exodus that would continue right up to the Civil War.6 T e following year, Mary Ann


joined her father at the Great North American Anti-Slavery Convention in Toronto. Abraham also was look- ing for a new homeland. T e promise of antislavery that had seemed so bright a decade earlier had faded.7


JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2013 DIVERSITY & THE BAR®


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