Today in American history…Mary Ann Shadd Cary was born on October 9, 1823 in Wilmington, Delaware.

A woman of many firsts, she was the first black woman in North America to publish a newspaper in 1853: The Provincial Freeman.
The newspaper was published weekly in southern Ontario. She advocated for equality, integration and self-education for black people in Canada and the United States.

She was also one of the first black lawyers in the United States.

She was a Suffragist, writer, teacher and abolitionist. In her first published letter, which was written to Frederick Douglass, she wrote:

“We should do more and talk less… We have been holding conventions for years — we have been assembling together and whining over our difficulties and afflictions, passing resolutions on resolutions to any extent, But it does really seem that we have made but little progress considering our resolves.”