From blogs to podcasts to major media publications, we live in an era of abundant forms and platforms of journalism. Still, many find that their perspective or realities or their acts of activism in the interests of their communities or the interests of others go unreported, unread, unseen. Inclusive reporting and broadening diversity of the owners, editors and authors of journalism is a call to the field today but it was also the call of entrepreneurs of our past. This Cavalluzzo LLP Feature reflects on the journalistic undertakings of several Canadians who ensured the existence of a platform for voices, stories and opinions not broadly otherwise reported, who represented and reached more communities and who promoted civil and social justice and change.
Henry and Mary Bibb: Voice of the Fugitive
Mary and Henry Bibb were Black abolitionists and civil rights activists. In 1851, in Sandwich (Windsor), Ontario, they established Voice of the Fugitive, the first Black-owned and operated newspaper publication in Canada. Henry Bibb, who had himself escaped from enslavement, was a well-known lecturer and author of his autobiography Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Henry Bibb, An American Slave. Mary Bibb was a teacher and active abolitionist who was also involved in women’s rights activism.
Their publication, Voice of the Fugitive, has been described as the first African American abolitionist newspaper. It reported the stories of enslaved and formerly enslaved Black people from throughout North America, often through interviews. Its content covered the Underground Railroad, promoted Black activism, discussed anti-Black racism in Canada, called for abolition and promoted Black rights. To some extent, it also included coverage of some women’s rights initiatives.
It has been described as having been an important means of communicating with Underground Railroad supporters as well as the general public.
Mary Ann Shadd Cary: The Provincial Freeman
Mary Ann Shadd Cary was born in 1823 in Delaware, a state that enslaved Black people. Her parents were abolitionists and their home was a refuge on the Underground Railroad. After the United States Congress passed the Fugitive Slave Act in 1850, which was designed to aid enslavers in recapturing people formerly enslaved and which put the freedom of many Black persons at further risk, Shadd Cary’s family moved to Canada.
Shadd Cary moved to Windsor in the early 1850s and, trained as a teacher with experience teaching in New York City, she opened a school, particularly serving Black families who managed to escape to the area from slavery in the United States. Shadd Cary was a vocal advocate for emigration from America and its ongoing slavery laws, for the rights of Black people, for women, and for education and empowerment.
This activism led her to journalism. She established The Provincial Freeman in 1853 which would become a major platform for discussion, opinion and advocacy on issues of abolition, anti-racism, and women’s rights (including suffrage mobilization for Voting Rights for women).
In its first year of publication, Shadd Cary worked with abolitionist and newspaper man Samuel Ringgold Ward to establish the paper – this partnership was partly out of concern that the paper would meet early demise if she did it herself, given the restricted role society expected of women at the time. By 1854, Shadd Cary continued publication out of Toronto and she is reported to have been the first Black woman in North America to establish and edit a newspaper. Even then, she sometimes wrote only with initials in the by-line to avoid gender reference. Nevertheless, Shadd Cary was a rebel in her time, bucking restrictive social expectations of women and speaking out through the publication on women’s rights even in the face of public criticism for doing so and for publishing pieces tackling anti-Black racism.
During its seven-year run, The Provincial Freeman ran contributions from a range of prominent and influential authors including Frederick Douglass, Lucretia Mott, Lucy Stone Blackwell and Frances Ellen Watkins Harper. The Provincial Freeman was an important platform for voices advocating for change in its day but, as one writer has said, Shadd Cary’s perspective also “deepens our understanding of the past and is an example of why representation in journalism matters.”*
Carrie Best: The Clarion
Almost a century later, in 1946, Carrie Best, a human rights activist and early writer, established The Clarion, one of Nova Scotia’s first Black-owned and published newspapers also that broadened coverage to include issues involving anti-Black racism.
Best grew up in New Glasgow, Nova Scotia, living a life surrounded and impacted by racism. Only a few examples were racial segregation in education, businesses maintaining “white only” sections, professional programs excluding Black applicants, military service being denied to or restricted in respect of Black applicants, and race-based segregation of burials and cemeteries.
Best and her son, Calbert Best, had themselves protested a “white only” policy in the Roseland Theatre which restricted Black patrons to sitting only in the balcony. The Bests were removed by force by police and charged, convicted and fined. Best attempted a civil claim against the forcible ejection and damage she incurred. It was ultimately dismissed and the racial discrimination claim was ignored. However, Best pursued her passion for fighting against inequality and racism by establishing The Clarion with her son.
In 1946, the front cover of the first volume of The Clarion was a detailed exposé of the experience of Viola Desmond at the Roseland Theatre, the same theatre that had discriminated against Best and her son and treated them so poorly five years prior and that had been discriminating against Black Nova Scotians for years. The Clarion detailed the racist treatment of Ms Desmond, the legal challenge surrounding her circumstances and the involvement of the Nova Scotia Association for the Advancement of Coloured People.
The Clarion reported on news and significant events, on issues concerning and advocacy for Black rights, and on improved race relations. It also commonly included photographic portraiture of Black individuals and families in the community. Gabrielle Moser has observed that “The Clarion’s contents wove together everyday Black life in Canada with early-twentieth century struggles for civil rights happening transnationally.” The publication was renamed in 1956 as The Negro Citizen and became a national publication.
Carrie Best later wrote a weekly column, “Human Rights,” in the Pictou Advocate. She regularly argued for equality in civil rights, for the rights and improved conditions for Indigenous people, and she conducted in-depth investigation into and coverage of discrimination against Black residents of parts of New Glasgow in taxing, housing and property.
Special thanks to Sheilagh Turkington for her assistance in preparing this feature.
Further Readings
“Henry and Mary Bibb, Publishers of the Voice of the Fugitive newspaper,” The Harriet Tubman Institute for Research on Africa and its Diasporas York University (2013)
nboros and Clio Admin. "Mary Bibb." Clio: Your Guide to History. March 26, 2020. Accessed January 29, 2022. https://www.theclio.com/entry/89438
Cooper, Afua, “Black Women and Work in Nineteenth-Century Canada West: Black Woman Teacher Mary Bibb,” in We’re Rooted Here and They Can’t Pull Us Up”: Essays in African Canadian Women’s History, University of Toronto Press, 1994.
Susanna McLeod, “Carrie Best” in The Canadian Encyclopedia (2021)https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/carrie-best
Jane Rhodes, Mary Ann Shadd Cary: The Black Press and Protest in the Nineteenth Century (1999)
Constance Backhouse, ““I was Unable to Identify with Topsy”: Carrie M. Best’s Struggle Against Racial Segregation in Nova Scotia,1942” (1998) Atlantis: Critical Studies in Gender, Culture, and Social Justice Vol. 11 (No.2)
Bill V. “Celebrating Mary Ann Shadd, Canada’s First Black Female Newspaper Publisher” Toronto Public Library (October 8, 2021) https://torontopubliclibrary.typepad.com/arts_culture/2021/10/celebrating-mary-ann-shadd-canadas-first-black-and-female-newspaper-publisher-.html
*“Mary Ann Shadd: Journalism, Activism, and the Power of Words” The Canadian Encyclopedia (January 2022) and the related podcast from Strong and Free from Historica Canada.
**Moser, Gabrielle “Familial ties and citizen claims: photography and early civil rights activism in African-Canadian newspapers” (October 2020) Taylor & Francis Online Volume 36, 2021
About this feature: The Cavalluzzo LLP features series, Reflections: Labour, Human and Civil Rights, highlights some of the leaders, events, and milestones that are historical underpinnings to the current landscape of Canadian human rights and labour rights. Reflections may reference abhorrent historical realities: as we bear witness to those, we also recognize with gratitude the courage and commitment of the changemakers who continue to inspire strides in social justice. Each instalment in this series has been authored or contributed to by Cavalluzzo LLP staff, articling students or lawyers.