Archives of North America’s first Black female publisher, added to national register

North America’s first Black female newspaper publisher will be immortalized in international archives.

The archival records of Mary Ann Shadd Cary have been added to the Canada Memory of UNESCO’s Memory of the World Register.

The Memory of the World program is a UNESCO program that helps facilitate preservation and access to cultural records and documentary heritage. 

“It’s about time this happened,” said Adrienne Shadd, a historian, author and descendant of Shadd Cary. This year is the 200th anniversary of her birth

Shadd Cary’s records are currently housed in the Archives of Ontario and Library and Archives Canada (LAC).

They contain documents including letters to and from family members and prominent African American abolitionists, draft articles of Canada’s first anti-slavery newspaper, The Provincial Freeman and pages of her pamphlet, ‘A Plea for Emigration; or Notes of Canada West.’

The archives also contain the only known picture of Shadd Cary.

Adrienne says the archives are an important way to shed light on history.

“They tell us what was going on at the time,” she said. “She talked about the Black community and a lot of the achievements that were going on; Black businesses, even Black women, what they were doing in the communities.”

The register is a commemorative designation of the most significant examples of documentary heritage. Every country has their own national memory, which reviews nominations of records being considered for Canada’s memory every year.

Shadd Cary’s archives were nominated to the Canadian memory by the Archives of Ontario and LAC, says Cody Groat, chair of the Canadian Commission for Memory of the World.

“We saw that this archive had a lot of very significant records documenting [her] experiences as a free black woman in Canada West at the time, which is now contemporary Ontario,” Groat said. “[They archive] documented her experiences as a black woman in this period of time, but also as an activist, both in suffrage movements and then also in [the] abolitionist cause to abolish slavery in Canada and the remnants of slavery and racial discrimination here in Canada West.

“This was one of the fastest nominations that we agreed to as a committee.”

Each country can also nominate an archive collection to receive UNESCO recognition every two years. Groat says this designation is celebratory — and adds prestige and pressure to protect these collections.

“But the Memory of the World program, both nationally and internationally, also offers peer pressure to institutions, countries [and] funders to ensure that these collections are protected because they’re deemed of a very significant national value,” he continued.

Groat says the records will stay where they are — the Archives of Ontario and Library and Archives Canada — but the institutions housing them are now obliged to preserve them and provide more public access.

The life and legacy of Mary Ann Shadd Cary

Shadd Cary was an activist, journalist and lawyer who moved to Windsor and played a critical role in sharing the voice of Black Canadians and advocating for women’s rights.

She was born in Wilmington, Del. in 1823 and worked with her family to free enslaved people as part of the Underground Railroad. After teaching at schools across the northeastern United States, the family moved to Ontario in 1851. 

On the grounds of what is now Windsor City Hall Square, Shadd Cary opened a school for Black and white students. She wrote and lectured on the importance of freedom while living in Canada and published The Provincial Freeman.

Along with UNESCO’s commemoration, Shadd Cary is also memorialized in Windsor.

A statue commemorating Shadd Cary was unveiled in May 2022 and the Essex County Black Historical Research Society (ECBHRS) is planning further commemorations.

“There’s a lot of collaboration with different organizations around the city to commemorate the words of Mary Ann Shadd Cary and her legacy,” said Shantelle Browning-Morgan, secretary of the research society. 

Browning-Morgan gave a lecture in the summer on Shadd Cary at the Teaching Black History Conference at the University of Buffalo in Buffalo, N.Y. She says none of the American educators present had heard of Shadd Cary.

“That Canadian piece often gets left out,” Browning-Morgan said. “It’s really important and it also reflects Canada’s heritage and the diversity of it.”

For more stories about the experiences of Black Canadians — from anti-Black racism to success stories within the Black community — check out Being Black in Canada, a CBC project Black Canadians can be proud of. You can read more stories here.