Contextualizing Shadd Cary

Abstract Chapter 4 contains correspondence from other notable Black activists such as Frederick Douglass and Martin Delany, as well as contemporaneous accounts of Shadd Cary’s writings and activism published in local newspapers. Some documents offer excerpts or summaries of Shadd Cary’s work. Others include praise for her as a pioneering Black woman activist. Still others offer criticisms of Shadd Cary from the perspective of rivals with whom she shared a contentious relationship, like Henry Bibb. This chapter also offers information about Shadd Cary’s teaching and lecturing during the later years of her life. It reflects how Shadd Cary was received by fellow activists and general audiences during her lifetime, and highlights African American collective memory of Shadd Cary’s abolitionism during the late nineteenth century.