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.