Born on October 9, 1823, in Wilmington, Delaware, Mary Ann Shadd received her early education at a Quaker school in Pennsylvania. At the age of 16 she had opened a school for Black children in Wilmington at a time when Delaware denied free Black children admission to schools. By 1849 she had written and published a widely acclaimed "excellent pamphlet ... on the elevation of the colored people."

     With the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act, she emigrated to Canada West in the fall of 1851. After consultation with some of the settlers she opened a school for fugitive children. Soon she was writing for publication and became embroiled in controversy with the publisher of the Voice of the Fugitive, an anti-slavery newspaper. Mary Ann Shadd was not easily daunted; in addition, she saw the need for another paper, so in 1853 she started the Provincial Freeman, thus becoming the first Black woman on the continent of North America to found and edit a weekly newspaper. Her paper was published and distributed in Windsor, Toronto and Chatham during the 1850s.

     An advocate of women's rights and abolition, she toured the lecture circuit. She was commissioned as a Recruiting Officer during the American Civil War. On January 3, 1856, Mary Shadd and Thomas F. Cary were married in St. Catharines. In 1858 a daughter was born to the couple and by the spring of 1861 Mary had given birth to a son and had buried her husband. Mary was left to raise her two children unassisted.

     At age 46 she was the first woman law student at the newly established Howard University. Though listed among the senior class of 1871-72, she was not allowed to graduate and charged sex discrimination as the basis for that denial. Barred entry to the Civil Service though highly qualified, she continued teaching to support her family. She returned to Law School in 1883 and was awarded her LL.B in May 1883. At age 60 she embarked on her legal career and practised until her death on June 5, 1893.