Mary E. Bibb

Mary Elizabeth Bibb (1820 – 1877) was an American-born educator and abolitionist leader. She is considered by some to be the first female black journalist in Canada.

The daughter of free black Quaker parents, she was born Mary Elizabeth Miles in Rhode Island around1820. She studied at the Massachusetts State Normal School in Lexington, graduating in 1843. The principal of that school was Samuel Joseph May, who supported women's rights and education for black people. She was one of the first black woman teachers in North America and taught in schools in Boston, Albany and Cincinnati. She became involved in anti-slavery activities and, in 1847, met Henry Bibb, an escaped slave and abolitionist. She became Bibb's second wife in June the following year.

After the Fugitive Slave Act was passed in 1850, the Bibbs moved to Canada West, settling first in Sandwich and then in Windsor. The couple frequently took fugitives into their home who had arrived in Windsor via the Underground Railroad. In 1851, they began publishing a newspaper called Voice of the Fugitive, the first major newspaper targeted at black Canadians. Mary and Henry Bibb were also part of the leadership of the Refugee Home Society, which helped former slaves settle in Canada, providing them with land and building schools and churches. Mary also taught school, educating both children and adults. In 1851, the Bibbs organized a North American Convention in Toronto on how free black Americans and Canadians should respond to the Fugitive Slave Act. On October 9, 1853, the office of the Voice of the Fugitive newspaper was mysteriously burned to the ground. Mary and Henry tried to revive it, but Henry died suddenly in the summer of 1854 at the age of 39.

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