1829–1834
MARIA STEWART
Kathryn Sophia Belle
I was first introduced to Maria W. Stewart (1803–79) as a student at Spelman College in a feminist theory course brilliantly taught by Beverly Guy-Sheftall. The primary text for the course—Sheftall’s classic edited collection, Words of Fire: An Anthology of African American Feminist Thought (1995)—begins with Stewart. Perhaps for this reason, she has always stood out to me as a foundational Black feminist and philosophical figure. Stewart offers what I have termed proto-intersectionality—an early Black feminist articulation of intersecting identities and oppressions along the lines of race, gender, and class.
Stewart was born free in Connecticut, orphaned at five years old, and worked as a servant for a minister in her youth. She later worked as a teacher in New York, Baltimore, and Washington, D.C., where she also served as a matron of the Freeman’s Hospital. She became a prominent speaker and writer—though that was short-lived due to racism and sexism. Nevertheless, several of her essays and speeches were published in The Liberator, and she self-published two edited collections of her written works. She created her own legacy through her speeches, writings, and activism against race and gender oppression. But in the historical record, she is often presented through the lens of her relationships with prominent men: as the widow of James W. Stewart, a friend of David Walker, a correspondent of Alexander Crummell, and a friend and professional affiliate of William Lloyd Garrison.
Stewart has been identified as the first woman in the United States to speak publicly to an audience composed of men and women, and also as America’s first Black woman political writer. Her speech in September 1832 was organized by the Afric-American Female Intelligence Society of Boston. It was a time when “women did not speak in public,” as Paula Giddings explains, “especially on serious issues like civil rights, and most especially, feminism.” And they especially did not speak publicly before a “promiscuous” audience of both men and women.
Beyond the significance of this historic first, Marilyn Richardson argues, “Her original synthesis of religious, abolitionist, and feminist concerns places her squarely in the forefront of black female activist and literary tradition only now beginning to be acknowledged as of integral significance to the understanding of the history of black thought and culture in America.” Richardson also describes Stewart as offering a “triple consciousness, as she demonstrates the creative struggle of a woman attempting to establish both a literary voice and an historical mirror for her experience as ‘an American, a Negro,’ and a woman.”
Stewart made her public appearances, speeches, and writings during the time of the Second Great Awakening, the Nat Turner Revolt, and intense debates about slavery—from more militant abolitionism (as expressed in William Lloyd Garrison’s The Liberator, for example) to concerted efforts for the colonization or repatriation of free Black people to Africa by the American Colonization Society. The Liberator published several of Stewart’s writings, including “Religion and the Pure Principles of Morality, The Sure Foundation on Which We Must Build” (October 8, 1831); “An Address Delivered Before the Afric-American Female Intelligence Society of America” (April 28, 1832); “Cause for Encouragement: Composed upon Hearing the Editors’ Account of the Late Convention in Philadelphia” (letter to the editor, July 14, 1832); “Lecture Delivered at the Franklin Hall” (speech delivered September 21, 1832); “An Address Delivered at the African Masonic Hall” (March 2, 1833; speech delivered February 27); and “Mrs. Stewart’s Farewell Address to Her Friends in the City of Boston” (September 21, 1833).
These writings shed light on her proto-intersectional ideas. In her 1831 pamphlet “Religion and the Pure Principles of Morality, The Sure Foundation on Which We Must Build,” Stewart critiqued both the prevailing racist assumption that Blacks were an inferior race and the sexist paternalism of men, all while calling on Black women to have more agency. She named race, gender, and class oppression in the form of economic exploitation of the labor of the “fair daughters of Africa.” She admonished Black women to wake up, rise up, and support one another through cooperative economies to gain economic independence. She considered a range of possibilities for Black women, from mothers and educators to intellectually and economically empowered contributors to the community. She called on Black women to “possess the spirit of men, bold and enterprising, fearless and undaunted. Sue for your rights and privileges. Know the reason you cannot attain them.”
In 1832 Stewart delivered a lecture at Franklin Hall in Boston. She called out racial prejudice and its specific impact on Black women and girls, limiting them to servile labor and ignoring their qualities beyond that service. In her 1833 “Farewell Address to Her Friends in the City of Boston,” she outlined diverse roles and expectations for women, especially Black women. Offering examples of women in the Bible as well as women from various cultures (Greek, Roman, Jewish, Ethiopian, and even “barbarous nations”), Stewart again made the case for Black women in particular to publicly demand their rights. And in her 1833 “Address Delivered at the African Masonic Hall,” Stewart critiqued Black men for their “talk, without effort.” The “gross neglect, on your part, causes my blood to boil within me.”
Beginning with Maria W. Stewart, Black women have been offering intersectional analyses of identity and oppression since at least the early nineteenth century. In addition to her foundational insights about intersecting identities and oppressions, Stewart has also been analyzed from the perspective of her religious and theological insights and interventions, her rhetorical strategies, and her appeals to sympathetic violence.
1834–1839
THE NATIONAL NEGRO CONVENTIONS
Eugene Scott
More than 150 years after Black Americans experienced the first tastes of freedom, a question still dominates the minds of those deeply invested in the fate of the descendants of the enslaved: what does it mean to be Black and free in the United States? Throughout the history of Black America, the media have played a significant role in finding answers to the most pressing race questions. And in many ways they continue to do so. However, in an era when many media outlets show little interest in grappling with these questions while others are simply struggling to remain viable, the ability—or willingness—of the press to replicate what it was once so effective at doing is concerning.
Since Black people first arrived in what would become the United States, freedom was without question their greatest desire. And that continued to be the case in those decades leading up to the abolition of slavery, even as attempts at emancipation became more frequent. But exactly what emancipation would look like for Black Americans was still unclear and debatable. While some Black thinkers and abolitionists entertained ideas of citizenship, others believed that formerly enslaved people could never be treated equally and with respect, so they advocated for racial separatism or emigration to the Caribbean or western Africa. Activists grappled with these ideas publicly and privately, but there was a need for a robust gathering where the leaders of the time could discuss the future of Black people. In 1834 those of great influence who were concerned with the state—and fate—of Black people in America congregated to find answers at National Negro Conventions, gatherings aimed at moving America toward abolition at the very least, in the hope that the formerly enslaved would command a more respected standing in the country and across the globe.