A Request For Emigration

A “REQUEST” FOR EMIGRATION

Mary Ann Shadd was a freed American slave who emigrated to Canada due to the American Fugitive Slave law of 1855 which declared that all runaway slaves must be broughtback to their masters. She escaped to Canada because they had an anti-slavery legislation, although there was still racial prejudice there. Once in Canada, she wrote “A Plea for Emigration” which dealtwith Canadian inducement and emphasized the advantages that coloured people would have if they moved there. Although Mary Ann Shadd defends that her work is done with objectivity, the followingreasons will show you why “A Plea for Emigration” is biased and propagandistic.

The first reason why she is not being impartial is her experience, which is inevitably embedded on her works becauseCanada was the country which welcomed her when she was persecuted in America. For this reason, all the adjectives she uses have a strong connotation and show how black people have been integrated in awhite society. This writer defends that: “the former prejudices on the part of the whites have given place to a perfect reciprocity of religious and social intercommunication” (A Plea for Emigration, line79). In order to be objective, she should not have shown only the advantages for black people, but for every immigrant in Canada.

Moreover, she is not impartial when talking about equality betweenblacks and whites. As she knows, her work will be mostly read by coloured people and that is why many of her examples deal with the equality between black and white citizens. According to Mary AnnShadd, “builders, and other tradesmen, of different complexions, work together on the same building and in the same shop, with perfect harmony, and often the proprietor of an establishment is colored,and the majority or all the men employed are white” (A Plea for Emigration, line 54). Although this affirmation seems quite exaggerated, she needs to emphasize those events in order to convince black...