Black History Spotlight...

Mary Ann Shadd
(1823–1893)

"Self-reliance Is the Fine Road to Independence."

Shadd holds two titles: first female black lawyer and first female newspaper editor in North America. She was one of the first people to push for complete integration and opened the first school in Canada open to all races.

EDUCATION: At the age of ten, the Shadd's moved to West Chester, Pennsylvania where Mary attended a Quaker School for the next six years. This experience influence dMary later in life, whereby she returned to this location and opened a school for Black children in 1840. Later, she also taught in New York City and Norristown, Pennsylvania.

1889, Mary Ann Shadd Cary became the first woman to enter Howard University's law school. She was in 1883 the first Negro woman to obtain a law degree from Howard University [the Encyclopedia Britannica says the degree is from Havard which seems to me odd for a student at Howard University] and among the first women in the United States to do so. She wrote for National Era and The People's Advocate and joined the National Woman's Suffrage Association. Cary then worked alongside Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton for women's suffrage, testifying before the Judiciary Committee of the House of Representatives and becoming the first Negro woman to cast a vote in a national election. As an educator, an abolitionist, an editor, an attorney and a feminist, she dedicated her life to improving the quality of life for everyone -- black and white, male and female.

Monday's Motivation

"Success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has overcome."
Booker T. Washington



Born: (1856-1915)
Occuptaion: Lecturer, Civil Rights/Human Rights Activist, Educational Administrator, Professor, Organization Executive/Founder, Author/Poet

Booker T. Washington was born a slave in Hale's Ford, Virginia, reportedly on April 5, 1856. After emancipation, his family was so poverty stricken that he worked in salt furnaces and coal mines beginning at age nine. Always an intelligent and curious child, he yearned for an education and was frustrated when he could not receive good schooling locally. When he was 16 his parents allowed him to quit work to go to school. They had no money to help him, so he walked 200 miles to attend the Hampton Institute in Virginia and paid his tuition and board there by working as the janitor.

Dedicating himself to the idea that education would raise his people to equality in this country, Washington became a teacher. He first taught in his home town, then at the Hampton Institute, and then in 1881, he founded the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute in Tuskegee, Alabama. As head of the Institute, he traveled the country unceasingly to raise funds from blacks and whites both; soon he became a well-known speaker.

Famous Booker T. Washington Quotes

"Associate yourself with people of good quality, for it is better to be alone than in bad company."

"Excellence is to do a common thing in an uncommon way."

"I let no man drag me down so low as to make me hate him."

In honor of Black History I'm gonna bring your attention to a different Black History figure everyday. Take time to read the different info and enlighten yourself.Thanks for reading the blog and come back tomorrow. Refresh-Rethink-Renew!!!