"So Go to Editing": Mary Ann Shadd Cary and the Liminality of Editorship and Authorship

"So Go to Editing"Mary Ann Shadd Cary and the Liminality of Editorship and Authorship Demetra McBrayer In a letter to Mary Ann Shadd Cary, William Still writes, "That you have had formidable difficulties to contend with, in relation to your enterprise, none will doubt who have the least idea of how much labour, activity, and ability that is required to fill the post of Editor, Publisher, and Financier, all at the same time" (qtd. in Rhodes 98). Indeed, the demands of Shadd Cary's work as editor—scouring other newspapers, gathering and organizing contents, and getting the paper to a job printer despite persistent trouble securing financial support through subscribers or advertisers—were immense. And yet, much of this effort remains invisible to today's readers. Despite all the ways that editors leave their marks on a finished product, their labor often recedes into the background. In the case of Shadd Cary, neglecting her editorial labor prevents us from understanding its integral part in shaping her future activism and writing. We overlook a crucial factor in her emergence as a key voice in the diasporic Black community who tackled urgent issues, including emancipation, equity, and citizenship, amid increasing anti-Black violence following passage of the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act. Shadd Cary's evolution as an editor, writer, and activist appears to have begun early in her life. Born in 1823 in Wilmington, Delaware, to Abraham and Harriet Shadd, she was raised in the midst of antislavery activism. Her parents housed self-emancipated persons and worked as part of the Underground Railroad; her father also participated in the American Anti-Slavery Society and attended conventions, such as the 1834 Colored Convention in New York. As the family moved from Delaware to Pennsylvania and later Canada West, Shadd Cary became part of the social circles of African American activists and abolitionist organizations in prominent cities, such as Philadelphia—which is likely where she met her longtime correspondent William Still, a cornerstone [End Page 11] of that city's Underground Railroad and antislavery activism. These early experiences undoubtedly helped Shadd Cary recognize what Eric Gardner notes in his work on the Christian Recorder: the importance of community identity and connectedness within physical locations that anchored further ties among diverse, diasporic Black communities throughout the United States (14). Community could be formed through the pages of periodicals, but it truly flourished when that imagined community corresponded to physical connection and engagement. The shaping of a Black community in print, however, could work in exclusionary ways. In response to growing tension between Shadd Cary and Henry Bibb, his newspaper, Voice of the Fugitive, and his supporters, Shadd Cary sought to establish her own newspaper. She had confronted Bibb both in meetings and print, on several issues. The most extensive of these disagreements was on the pathway forward for the fugitive Black community in Canada West—whether that was through benevolence or autonomy. Shadd Cary watched as her character and claims were minimized and dismissed by Bibb's Voice; the newspaper operated to silence opposition to their organizations and stances. In return, she asked Samuel Ringgold Ward and Rev. Alexander McArthur, influential community voices and members of antislavery organizations within Canada West and the United States, to help her establish a newspaper, the Provincial Freeman (1853–57). Their connections and reputations within the Black communities and antislavery organizations of Canada West and the United States would substantiate the newspaper and provide it, ideally, a strong subscription base. Ward and McArthur appeared on the Freeman's masthead as editors, yet they did not carry out the duties of editing the Freeman. Shadd Cary did. When Shadd Cary did go on hiatus from the paper for tours or business, she left it in the charge of Isaac Shadd and Amelia Freeman Shadd, her brother and his wife. Editors like Ward and McArthur, and later others like William Newman, were merely figureheads. When the Freeman began publication in Chatham, Ward lived in Toronto and McArthur in Amherstburg while he also toured. Key figures of the Canadian Black community were listed as Committee of Publication members, but they all lived far away from Chatham (Rhodes 74–76). Despite this...

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