Mary Ann Shadd Cary was a courageous and outspoken nineteenth-century African American who used the press and public speaking to fight slavery and oppression in the United States and Canada. Part of the small free black elite who used their education and limited freedoms to fight for the end of slavery and racial oppression, Shadd Cary is best known as the first African American woman to publish and edit a newspaper in North America. But her importance does not stop there. She was an active participant in many of the social and political movements that influenced nineteenth century abolition, black emigration and nationalism, women's rights, and temperance. Mary Ann Shadd Cary: The Black Press and Protest in the Nineteenth Century explores her remarkable life and offers a window on the free black experience, emergent black nationalisms, African American gender ideologies, and the formation of a black public sphere. This new edition contains a new epilogue and new photographs.

"The introduction, "We Should Do More, and Talk Less," offers a biographical overview of Mary Ann Shadd Cary. It describes the historical context that informed her writings and activism, and charts her ideological shifts throughout the nineteenth century. In so doing, it devotes particular attention to the ways that slavery, abolition, the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, and Reconstruction influenced Shadd Cary's intellectual thought. "We Should Do More, and Talk Less" discusses the gendered controversies and personal financial challenges that Shadd Cary experienced during the 1850s while she edited her newspaper, the Provincial Freeman, and managed a school. The introduction explains how Shadd Cary understood three central themes: racial uplift, women's rights, and emigration. It also defines a key concept, the Black radical ethic of care, in its examination of nineteenth-century Black radicalism"--

The first collection of essays published on trailblazing nineteenth-century Black feminist, activist, journal, and educator, Mary Ann Shadd Cary Mary Ann Shadd Cary (1823–1893) was a trailblazing Black feminist, activist, journalist, and educator whose achievements can be traced across Canada and the United States. Born in a border state in the antebellum era, Shadd Cary taught in schools in New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania before becoming a strong advocate for immigration to Canada in her early adulthood. Once she moved to Ontario in the mid-1850s, she dove headfirst into early Black Canadian debates. She fought to integrate schools in the States and Canada and became, as the editor of the Provincial Freeman, the first Black woman to edit a newspaper in North America. Despite her achievements and impact on Black life in North America, Shadd Cary is a relatively little-known figure outside of the continent. Insensible of Boundaries is the first collection of essays published on this thinker. With this volume, editor Kristin Moriah brings together eleven essays from a broad range of perspectives, including historical, literary, gender, ecological, bibliographical, visual, sound, and performance studies, on nineteenth-century Black feminist inquiry in North America. The volume focuses particularly on three main topics: Shadd Cary’s relationship to immigration, nation, and colonization; the Black creative and nation-building work that Shadd Cary has inspired; and contemporary research methodologies like digital humanities as they can be used to better understand Shadd Cary’s moment, impacts, and life. Through a multi- and interdisciplinary lens, the collection celebrates Shadd Cary’s cultural significance and intellectual contributions, as well as their reverberations in her time and in ours. Contributors: R. J. Boutelle , Jim Casey, Rosalyn Green, Lauren Klein, Kirsten Lee, Brandi Locke, Demetra McBrayer, A. T. Moffett, Kristin Moriah, Dianna Ruberto, Lynnette Young Overby, Eunice Toh, Rinaldo Walcott, Marlas Yvonne Whitley, Jewon Woo.

"Shadd was the first black woman on the North American continent to found and edit a weekly newspaper, publishing The Provincial Freeman in Windsor, Toronto, and Chatham during the 1850s. [...] Her story is not simply that of a black and a woman, but of a unique and exciting human being whose life should be a stimulation and a challenge to all people everywhere." - from the dustjacket.