news

Black History Month 2021

February 26, 2021
Print

Canada observes Black History Month each year during February. This year's theme, The Future is Now, invited people in Canada to celebrate the transformative work being done by Black Canadians.

As our own observance we've shared a few resources from philosophy, with the reflection that this is not just one month in twelve.

Please scroll down for a post about Mary Ann Shadd Cary, one of the first female journalists in Canada, and for links to other resources we've shared this month.

Mary Ann Shadd (October 9, 1823 – June 5, 1893), an African American educator, writer, abolitionist, and lawyer.

Mary Ann Shadd Cary

Written by Matheus Mazzochi, an SFU Philosophy undergraduate student

Mary Ann Shadd Cary (1823 – 1893) is considered to be one of the first female journalists in Canada, the first Black woman in North America to publish a newspaper, and the first Black woman to complete a law degree in North America. She advocated for the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments at a House Judiciary Committee Hearing, but criticized the definition of citizen because it did not give the right to vote to women. She founded the Colored Women’s Progressive Association, became a member of the National Woman Suffrage Association, and was named a Person of National Historic Significance by the Government of Canada.

Image credit: By Unknown author - nps.gov, courtesy of National Archives of Canada, C-029977, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7353155 

In her work A Plea for Emigration – or Notes of Canada West (1852), Mary Ann promotes Canada as a destination to anyone looking for “personal freedom and political rights”, which are paramount to her. She does that due to the “absence of condensed information accessible to all”. Although she describes the climate, the culture and the fertile lands of Canada, there is a sense in her writing that they are all possible because of the possibility to be allowed to be free to pursue a life with dignity and to belong in a State that protects you by giving you rights. 

In 1853, Mary Ann began publishing her own newspaper, The Provincial Freeman, where she promotes anti-slavery ideas and women’s rights. The United States Presidential Election (1856) is an example. She enumerates the challenges that abolitionists have faced, and, in a prophetic tone, implies that slavery is not going to be solved through politics. She believes that “there is no one so thoroughly depraved as to love violence for its own sake”. However, what should we do when we see it daily? When the oppressor is in power, how are we going to get or protect our rights? Her answer is simple: not “without hard and bloody work”. People did not become abolitionists “from motives of humanity”, according to her, but “from motives of necessity”.

In 1860, The Provincial Freeman closed due to financial pressure. With the beginning of the American Civil War, Mary Ann returned to the United States in 1861 to help recruit soldiers for the Union Army. Years after the war, she enrolls in the first class of Howard University Law School, in Washington, DC, graduating in 1883. She died of a stomach cancer on June 5th, 1893.

Further Reading:

New Narratives in the History of Philosophy | Facebook

Resources Shared – Black History Month 2021

 

Graduate

Study Philosophy at SFU

Upcoming Events