Mary and Henry Bibb
Arriving as refugees from slavery in the United States, Mary and Henry Bibb fought all their lives to improve the well-being of the African Canadian community. A year after they settled in Sandwich in 1850, they founded a militant abolitionist newspaper, Voice of the Fugitive. Facing discrimination in the public school system, they established their own schools to improve the education of Black children and adults. These achievements and their involvement in the organization of the North American Convention of Colored Freemen in 1851 made the Bibbs one of the country's most influential couples of African descent.
From: Wikipedia
Henry Bibb
Henry Bibb (1815–1854) was an author and abolitionist who was born a slave. After escaping from slavery to Canada, he returned to the US and lectured against slavery. Migrating to Canada, he founded a newspaper Voice of the Fugitive.
Biography:
He was born to a mixed-race enslaved woman, Milldred Jackson, on a Cantalonia, Kentucky plantation on May 10, 1815. His people told him his white father was James Bibb, a Kentucky state senator, but Henry never knew him. As he was growing up, Bibb saw each of his six younger siblings, all boys, sold away to other slaveholders.
In 1833, Bibb married another mulatto slave, Malinda, who lived in Oldham County, Kentucky. They had a daughter, Mary Frances.
In 1842, he managed to flee to Detroit, from where he hoped to gain the freedom of his wife and daughter. After finding out that Malinda had been sold as a mistress to a white planter, Bibb focused on his career as an abolitionist. He traveled and lectured throughout the United States.
In 1849-50 he published his autobiography Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Henry Bibb, An American Slave, Written by Himself, which became one of the best known slave narratives of the antebellum years. The passage of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 increased the danger to Bibb and his second wife Mary E. Miles, of Boston. It required Northerners to cooperate in the capture of escaped slaves. To ensure their safety, the Bibbs migrated to Canada and settled in Ontario.
In 1851, he set up the first black newspaper in Canada, Voice of the Fugitive. Due to his fame as an author, Bibb was reunited with three of his brothers, who separately had also escaped from slavery to Canada. In 1852 he published their accounts in his newspaper.