In Search of Mary Miles Bibb: Trailblazer, Abolitionist, Educator

• In Event: Race and Politics in Canada

Abstract

The contributions of African American women from the 1800s are sparce in the historical record. The important work of Mary Miles (later Bibb, then Cary), who died in 1861, is just beginning to be recognized. The first African American to graduate from Framingham State University, she is credited as later being the first Black female journalist in Canada, recognized, with her husband Henry Bibb, as being persons of national historic significance by the Canadian government.

This paper, divided into two parts, begins with the story of this author’s search for Mary Miles Bibb. How does one track the life of a Black woman from the 1800s? What have been the results of archival searches from Windsor and Toronto, Canada to Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, and Boston and what challenges accompany the process of trying to retrieve pieces of a life, particularly that of a Black woman, more than 150 years after that person’s death?

Part two of the paper will discuss Bibb’s life in terms of her relevance to political science. Drawing on gendered frameworks offered by international relations scholars, Cynthia Enloe (2014) and Ann Tickner (2001), this section describes how signposts in Mary Bibb’s life show she was influential insofar as a Black woman living in the 1800s could be in shaping the anti-slavery and civil rights movement in her community and transnationally. This section also discusses the importance of further documenting and recognizing the work of Mary Miles Bibb as valuable to history and the field of international relations. Bibb functioned as a behind-the-scenes co-editor of one of Canada’s first Black newspapers called the Voice of the Fugitive that documented the experiences and political struggles of fugitive slaves following the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act. She also was a co-director with her husband of the Refugee Home Society, a nonprofit that collected donations then bought land that would be sold to fugitive slaves through rental agreements (like mortgages), allowing many fugitive slaves to acquire land (which also came with some security from slave-catchers who would sometimes come across the border to try to kidnap fugitive slaves to take them back into slavery). Bibb also launched numerous schools for fugitive slaves and their children at a time when simply getting an education was a political act for Blacks and those who chose to teach them. Bibb's work also included helping to organize conferences of Blacks seeking greater equality and life for immigrants. In addition, Bibb was an artist who was reported in the paper as having painted a portrait of anti-slavery politician, Charles Sumner, then donating that artwork to a local church. This paper will discuss these examples within the frame of international relations, discussing how the everyday is also political and how local actions are part of broader transnational political movements.

Author

• Carol J. Gray, University of Alaska