Department of English

Critics note that Shadd’s emigrationist platform focused on Canada as a terminus for Black out-migration in the Americas. Yet in this chapter I argue that to focus only on the Canadian arm of Shadd’s political awareness too closely links the settler aspirations of Shadd’s platform to land ownership in North America. Looking at Mexico in Shadd’s A Plea for Emigration; or, Notes of Canada West and in The Provincial Freeman shows how she argues both for and against a mass Black migration to Central America and the Caribbean. I propose in turning to Shadd that we find a framework beyond fugitivity to think about Black freedom (of) movement in the Americas in the nineteenth century. I argue that Shadd saw the expedience of a Canadian out-migration, but never saw it as the only or final destination for Black émigré and self-emancipating enslaved peoples.