Maria W. Stewart was an essayist, lecturer, abolitionist and women's rights activist. She was the earliest known American woman to lecture in public on political issues. She was also the first Black woman to make public lectures, as well as to lecture about women's rights and make a public anti-slavery speech. Stewart is known for four powerful speeches she delivered in Boston in the early 1830s - a time when no woman, Black or White, dared to address an audience from a public platform. She was born free as Maria Miller in 1803 in Hartford, Connecticut, the month is unknown and the year is a guess. All that is known about her parents is their surname, Miller. At the age of five, she lost both her parents and was forced to become a servant in the household of a White clergyman.
She lived with this family for ten years. Although she received no formal education, Maria learned as much as possible by reading books from the family library. After leaving the family at the age of fifteen, she supported herself as a domestic servant while furthering her education at Sabbath schools. It was also through sabbath school that Maria continued her religious education, although her dramatic conversion was still a few years away. Specific details about her employment or where she lived at the time are unknown. As a young woman she moved to Boston, Mass. On August 10, 1826, Maria Miller married James W. Stewart, an independent shipping agent and veteran of the War of 1812. He was forty‐seven years old, his new wife was just twenty‐three.
After the war, he had earned a substantial living by fitting out whaling and fishing vessels. It was by James' side that she joined the Black middle class of Boston. At the time, African Americans made up only three percent of Boston's population. This would be a fortuitous marriage for both bride and groom. The Stewarts became members of the small but vibrant free Black community in Boston's Beacon Hill area. They became involved in some of its institutions including the Massachusetts General Colored Association, which worked for immediate abolition of slavery. It was here in Boston that Maria Stewart met the man who would have the greatest impact on her thoughts and rhetorical style, --
David Walker. Walker's clothing store may have been the initial point of contact for his friendship with James Stewart. It was Walker’s form of Black nationalism, grounded in religious appeals and arguments for justice, that would inspire her.
In December 1829, three years after their marriage James died. The marriage had produced no children. Although Maria Stewart was left with a substantial inheritance, she was defrauded of it by the White executors of her husband's will after a drawn-out court battle. Once again, she was forced to turn to domestic service to support herself. Meanwhile, the abolitionist movement was beginning to gather strength in Boston. Stewart merged her deepening faith with public action in the growing abolition movement. In 1831,
William Lloyd Garrison, publisher of the abolitionist newspaper "The Liberator", called for women of African descent to contribute to the paper. Maria responded by arriving at his office with a manuscript containing several essays which Garrison agreed to publish.
Stewart's first publication, in 1831, a twelve-page pamphlet entitled "Religion and the Pure Principles of Morality", called upon African Americans to organize against slavery in the South and to resist racist restrictions in the North. The success of the piece led to a short but significant public speaking career for Stewart. She further advocated the establishment of strong, self-sufficient educational and economic institutions within African American communities. In particular, she called upon women to participate in all aspects of community life. "How long," she asked, "shall the fair daughters of Africa be compelled to bury their minds and talents beneath a load of iron pots and kettles?" Soon afterward, Stewart began to deliver public lectures.
She began public speaking, at a time when religious bans against women teaching prohibited women from speaking in public, especially to mixed audiences that included men. She gave four recorded public lectures between 1832 and 1833. Stewart also called for Black economic progress and women's rights. Other recurring themes included the value of education and the need for Black unity and collective action. Her first speaking engagement was on April 28, 1832, before the African American Female Intelligence Society of Boston. Aware that she was violating the taboo against women speaking in public, Stewart asserted in her talk that "the frowns of the world shall never discourage me". She urged African American women to stand up for their rights, rather than silently suffer humiliation. “It is useless for us any longer to sit with our hands folded, reproaching the Whites; for that will never elevate us,” she said.
Despite the fact that she had little formal education, Stewart continually showed her intelligence in her lectures, referencing the Bible, the U.S. Constitution and various literary works. When she was criticized for daring to speak in public, Stewart would claim that her authority came from God - that she was simply following God's will. On August 6, 1830, the body of her mentor, David Walker, was discovered near the door of his shop, just six months after her husband had died. After Walker's death, Maria carried on his legacy. She went through a religious conversion in which she became convinced that God was calling her to become a "warrior" "for God and for freedom" and "for the cause of oppressed Africa." Walker’s death convinced her of the immorality of those opposed to justice for the Black community and the shortness of the time granted her to effect change. Stewart’s deepening religious faith and the racism and segregation she experienced in Boston pressed her to speak her mind publicly. However, she was far less militant than Walker, and resisted advocating violence.
Maria then became a vocal advocate for "Africa, freedom and God's cause". However, she was far less militant than Walker, and resisted advocating violence. On September 21, 1832, Stewart lectured to an audience of both men and women at Franklin Hall, the site of the New England Anti-Slavery Society meetings. Rarely did women give public addresses in the early 1800s, especially in front of a "promiscuous audience"—one that contained both men and women. In that speech, she asserted that free Blacks were hardly better off than those in slavery. Stewart called on all Black Americans to develop racial pride, unity, and self-improvement through the expansion of educational and occupational rights. She also questioned the move to send free African Americans back to Africa.
Maria continued to submit her writings for publication. In 1832, Garrison published another pamphlet, "Meditations from the Pen of Mrs. Maria W. Stewart." Garrison also printed transcripts of all of Stewart's speeches in the Liberator; however, in accordance with the editorial conventions of the day, her contributions were relegated to the paper's "Ladies' Department." On February 27, 1833, she delivered her third public lecture, "African Rights and Liberty," at the African Masonic Hall. Stewart delivered her fourth and final Boston speech on September 21, 1833, announcing her decision to leave the city, moving to New York. She addressed the negative reaction that her public speaking had provoked, expressing both her dismay at having little effect, and her sense of divine call to speak publicly. She acknowledged that she had "made myself contemptible in the eyes of many, that I might win some," which she admitted was "like a labor in vain".
Nevertheless, Stewart gave in to public pressure and stopped lecturing in 1833, then turning her attention to education. Contrary to the prejudices of her day, Maria had long believed that all African Americans - both male and female - deserved the chance to acquire an education. In her speeches, Stewart had often referred to literacy as a sacred quest at a time when it was a crime to teach slaves to read or write. The preaching of God's word during the 1800s was seen in society as a male role even among some African American religious institutions. Stewart used Biblical language and imagery to condemn slavery and White racism. She argued that it was God's will for Black people to struggle against oppression, resistance to oppression was the highest form of obedience to God. The response to Stewart’s speeches – even from those who supported her cause – was overwhelmingly negative, for she had the audacity to speak onstage.
In 1833, Stewart moved from Boston to New York City, where she taught in public schools in Manhattan and Long Island. In 1835, two years after Stewart had left Boston, William Lloyd Garrison published a collection of her speeches plus some essays and poems, entitled "Productions of Mrs. Maria W. Stewart". Within a year of its appearance, other women, both African American and White, began to follow the path Stewart had opened, lecturing in churches and meeting halls across the country. She also continued her political activities, joining women's organizations, including a Black women's literary society, supported Frederick Douglass' newspaper, "The North Star," but did not write for it, and attended the Women's Anti-slavery Convention of 1837.
Writing about Stewart in the 1850s, historian William C. Nell, said "she encountered an opposition even from her Boston circle of friends, that would have dampened the ardor of most women." In 1861, she moved to Washington DC, where again she established a school for children of families that had escaped from slavery during the war. One of her new friends was Elizabeth Keckley, seamstress to First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln. By the early 1870s, Stewart had been appointed as head matron at the Freedman's Hospital and Asylum in Washington. A predecessor in this position was Sojourner Truth. In 1871, she raised $200 and established a Sunday school near Howard University for the neighborhood's poor children, where university students frequently helped her as teachers. The facility, established by the Freedmen's Bureau, served not only as a hospital but also as a refugee camp for former slaves displaced by the Civil War.
In 1878, a law was passed granting pensions to widows of War of 1812 veterans. Stewart continued to teach, even as she lived and worked at the hospital. Stewart used the unexpected money to publish a second edition of "Meditations from the Pen of Mrs. Maria W. Stewart". The book, which appeared on December 17, 1879, was introduced by supporting letters from Garrison and others. Maria Stewart's essays and speeches presented original formulations of many ideas that were to become central to the struggles for African American freedom, human rights, and women's rights.
Her expanded 1879 edition of "Productions of Mrs. Maria W. Stewart" includes an autobiographical sketch, "Sufferings During the War". In addition to religion, she insisted that Blacks pursue education. When "knowledge would begin to flow," she wrote, "the chains of slavery and ignorance would melt like wax before flames." Stewart died that December, 50 years to the day after her husband's death, at the Freedman's Hospital. Her dedication to fighting Black oppression through teaching, writing, and speaking was relentless. She expose her ideas and laid the foundation for many others to build upon of how capitalism, racism, and sexism adversely affect society. The opposition that Stewart encountered as a speaker is understandable, being an African American woman.
Maria Stewart made a very important contribution to the feminist movement. Despite the existence of female preachers and missionaries in the early part of the nineteenth century, political speech was still deemed the exclusive domain of men. Maria W. Stewart spoke six years before abolitionist Sarah Moore Grimké and nearly a full decade before Frederick Douglass began his own public career in 1841. Stewart anticipates the great abolitionist, civil rights and women’s rights speakers that followed her. In her four speeches are arguments, themes, and images echoed and given larger play not simply by Douglass and Grimké, but by Sojourner Truth, Sarah Parker Remond, Frances Ellen Harper, and decades later by W.E.B. Du Bois and William Monroe Trotter. Stewart’s unique place in political history may be captured by William Andrew’s description of her as "the first Black feminist‐abolitionist in America."
She proved that it was possible for women to get educated and speak out about what they believed in. She was not held back by societal expectations at that time that may have seemed impossible to overcome. Overall, Maria W. Stewart played a very important role as one of the first women to speak out and make her voice heard on issues that she cared deeply about. This was an example to other women that they could successfully do the same. Although she is not as well-known as other women who worked either in the feminist movement, or in the abolition movement, she still deserves recognition for her accomplishments. Stewart’s work should be remembered and recognized as it empowered other women to continue fighting their own fight for women’s suffrage. Despite her brief time giving lectures, Stewart's efforts have had a lasting impact on the fields of womanist theology and feminist studies.
Maria Stewart accomplished several firsts in her short public speaking career:
- She was the first African American woman to lecture about women's rights, and Black women's rights.
- Maria became the first American woman to speak to a mixed audience of men and women, Black and White.
- First known American woman to lecture in public on political issues.
- Stewart was the first African American woman to make public anti-slavery speeches.