{"id":5052,"date":"2025-05-14T03:01:00","date_gmt":"2025-05-14T03:01:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/coloredconventions.org\/mary-ann-shadd-cary\/?page_id=5052"},"modified":"2026-08-28T15:57:42","modified_gmt":"2026-08-28T19:57:42","slug":"conventions-in-the-provincial-freeman","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/coloredconventions.org\/mary-ann-shadd-cary\/cary-enters-black-organizing-debates\/conventions-in-the-provincial-freeman\/","title":{"rendered":"Colored Conventions Coverage in The Provincial Freeman"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Through <em>The Provincial Freeman, <\/em>Mary Ann Shadd Cary presented herself to a wide array of audiences seeking to participate in Black organizing and the Colored Conventions. From this position, Shadd Cary and her partners, editor Samuel Ringgold Ward and her brother Isaac Shadd, represented the conventions movement, its internal debates, and its relationship to other movements. Historian Martha Jones offers ways of looking at Shadd Cary\u2019s journalist and editorial work that speaks to her power to shape the conventions without needing to see her named as a delegate to recognize it [1]. For example, Shadd Cary sometimes distances herself by using her initials, asterisks, or quoting others in order to convey her argument without embedding herself in controversy. Jim Casey\u2019s research of the masking-effect that Shadd Cary\u2019s asterisk created in database queries reveals the continued efficacy of her efforts to distance her person from the important yet dangerous messages she felt compelled to publish, like advocating for Black women\u2019s rights or challenging powerful political activists [2]. The challenge of locating and presenting Shadd Cary\u2019s voice on the topic of conventions (Colored Conventions among others) is ultimately a worthwhile effort because it offers counter-narratives to the official records produced by organizers, with critiques that reflect her position at the intersection of gender and racial minority identities. The visualization below offers a chronology and map of clippings from <em>The Provincial Freeman <\/em>that showcase the techniques used by the Black press.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">StoryMap: May Ann Shadd Cary&#8217;s Provincial Freeman and Conventions Coverage<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Explore this StoryMap visualization for Shadd Cary\u2019s comments critiques of Colored Conventions and how this movement was in conversation with other political conventions.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-archivo-font-family wp-block-paragraph\" style=\"font-style:italic;font-weight:300\">\u00bb In the Storymap below, use the left and right side arrows to navigate through the slideshow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<!-- iframe plugin v.6.0 wordpress.org\/plugins\/iframe\/ -->\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"May Ann Shadd Cary\u2019s Provincial Freeman and Conventions Coverage\" src=\"https:\/\/uploads.knightlab.com\/storymapjs\/fdcc82844fb00163d27c59f96dbb7218\/the-provincial-freeman-and-conventions-coverage\/index.html\" frameborder=\"0\" width=\"100%\" height=\"600\" scrolling=\"yes\" class=\"iframe-class\"><\/iframe>\n\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:20px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">References<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">[1] Jones, Martha. <em>All Bound up Together: the Woman Question in African American Public Culture, 1830-1900<\/em>. Chapel Hill , NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2007, pp. 87-90.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">[2] Casey, Jim. \u201cParsing the Special Characters of African American Print Culture: Mary Ann Shadd and the * Limits of Search.\u201d <em>Against a Sharp White Background: Infrastructures of African American Print.<\/em> Edited by Brigitte Fielder and Jonathan Senchyne, University of Wisconsin Press, 2019, pp. 109\u201328.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">StoryMap Sources<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Provincial Freeman. <\/em>\u201cOur Free Colored Emigrants.\u201d May 20, 1854. From <a href=\"http:\/\/www.accessible.com.ezaccess.libraries.psu.edu\/accessible\/print\">Accessible Archives<\/a>. (accessed Dec 10, 2020).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Provincial Freeman. <\/em>\u201cAddress of the Women\u2019s Rights Convention.\u201d May 6 1854. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.accessible.com.ezaccess.libraries.psu.edu\/accessible\/print\">Accessible Archives<\/a>.&nbsp;(accessed Dec 10, 2020).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Provincial Freeman. <\/em>\u201cThe Nebraska Emigration Convention.\u201d May 20, 1854. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.accessible.com.ezaccess.libraries.psu.edu\/accessible\/print\">Accessible Archives<\/a>.&nbsp;(accessed Dec 10, 2020).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Provincial Freeman. <\/em>\u201cUntitled.\u201d October 14, 1854. From <a href=\"http:\/\/www.accessible.com.ezaccess.libraries.psu.edu\/accessible\/print\">Accessible Archives<\/a>. (accessed Dec 10, 2020).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Provincial Freeman<\/em>. \u201cAddress To the Colored People of Canada.\u201d Sept 8, 1855. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.accessible.com.ezaccess.libraries.psu.edu\/accessible\/print\">Accessible Archives<\/a>.&nbsp;(accessed Dec 10, 2020).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Provincial Freeman<\/em>. \u201cThe Cleveland Convention. Board of Publication.\u201d Nov 25, 1856. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.accessible.com.ezaccess.libraries.psu.edu\/accessible\/print\">Accessible Archives<\/a>.&nbsp;(date accessed Dec 10, 2020).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:15px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Through The Provincial Freeman, Mary Ann Shadd Cary presented herself to a wide array of audiences seeking to participate in Black organizing and the Colored Conventions. From this position, Shadd Cary and her partners, editor Samuel Ringgold Ward and her brother Isaac Shadd, represented the conventions movement, its internal debates, and its relationship to other [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":4795,"parent":5050,"menu_order":1,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-5052","page","type-page","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/coloredconventions.org\/mary-ann-shadd-cary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/5052","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/coloredconventions.org\/mary-ann-shadd-cary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/coloredconventions.org\/mary-ann-shadd-cary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coloredconventions.org\/mary-ann-shadd-cary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coloredconventions.org\/mary-ann-shadd-cary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5052"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/coloredconventions.org\/mary-ann-shadd-cary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/5052\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5338,"href":"https:\/\/coloredconventions.org\/mary-ann-shadd-cary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/5052\/revisions\/5338"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coloredconventions.org\/mary-ann-shadd-cary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/5050"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coloredconventions.org\/mary-ann-shadd-cary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4795"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/coloredconventions.org\/mary-ann-shadd-cary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5052"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}