As part of Black History Month, NewsNation is celebrating artful and creative pioneers within the Black community who have left an indelible mark on the arts and shattered barriers for other minority artists in the U.S. and in the world. Read about more impactful artists here.
(NewsNation) — Her name may not be widely known, but abolitionist Maria Stewart’s work and writing influenced major figures, including Frederick Douglass and Sojourner Truth. She was also one of the first women to give public speeches in the U.S. at a time when it was considered inappropriate.
Born Maria Miller in 1803, Stewart was from Connecticut, where she was born free. After being orphaned, she worked as a domestic servant, eventually moving to Boston. Stewart learned to read and write primarily through Sunday school classes.
Her marriage to James Stewart lasted just three years before he passed. Although the couple had been part of Boston’s small Black middle-class community, white executors cheated her out of her sizable inheritance.
Stewart became religious after the death of her husband, and she also became a political activist. Her work used religious imagery to condemn slavery and racism. Stewart said it was God’s will for Black people to fight against oppression and urged Black people and women to pursue an education. She also exhorted people to sue for their rights if necessary.
Stewart became the first Black American woman to publish a political manifesto in 1831 with her essay “Religion and the Pure Principles of Morality, the Sure Foundation on Which We Must Build.”
The success led to a public speaking career, with Stewart giving four public lectures between 1831 and 1833.
Stewart was recorded as one of the first American women to give a public speech with her September 1832 address.
At the time, speaking before a mixed audience of men and women was considered both improper and inappropriate. But Stewart embodied her calls for equality, both between races and between genders. In 1835, following the publication of a collection of her essays and speeches, other women began to follow in her footsteps, speaking on political issues in the public sphere.
Despite her belief in equality, public pressure did drive Stewart out of the public arena. She began working in education, moving to New York City and becoming a teacher. In her writings, Stewart referred to literacy as a sacred quest, and while in New York, she continued her political activism.
Stewart moved to Washington, D.C., in 1861, starting a school for children whose families had escaped slavery during the Civil War. In the early 1870s, Stewart was appointed as head matron for the Freedman’s Hospital and Asylum, which served as both a hospital and refugee camp for freed slaves displaced by the war.
In 1878, she was finally able to reclaim a portion of the inheritance owed to her after a new law granted pensions to widows of War of 1812 veterans. She used the money to publish a second edition of one of her books.
Stewart died in 1987 at the age of 76, with an obituary in a regional Black newspaper noting that she received little recognition in life for the work she had done.
