Western Oregon Journal

Issue date: 2/15/08 Section: Headlines

During a time when women were only entrusted with domestic chores, Maria Stewart was able to break down barriers and pave the way for future female political activists. She was America's first black woman political writer and the first African American to lecture about women's rights.

Maria Stewart was born in Connecticut in 1803 and became an orphan at the age of five. She spent her childhood working as a domestic servant in a clergyman's home. Not until age of 20 was she able to take literacy and religion classes in a Sabbath school.

After her husband's death in 1829 she was stripped of her inheritance fraudulently by white businessmen, she dedicated herself to becoming a religious and political activist. Her conversion and life dedication was also influenced by the death of abolitionist David Walker. Stewart had been strongly persuaded by Walker's ideas.

It was at this time that Stewart spoke out against hypocrisy, tyranny, victimization, injustice and slavery in Boston. Her first essay was published in 1831 in abolitionist newspaper, The Liberator. It was titled Religion And The Pure Principles Of Morality, The Sure Foundation On Which We Must Build. This essay was significant not only because of its content but also for the fact that it was the first political declaration written by an African American woman. In the essay, she argued that the Constitution and the Bible provided all people freedom and encouraged other African Americans to develop their skills.

Stewart was also very critical of the colonization movement (that proposed to send free blacks to Africa and to emancipate those who would agree to go). In response to this idea she wrote, "and now that we have enriched their soil and filled their coffers...they would drive us to a strange land. But before I go, the bayonet shall pierce me through."

Stewart often used the Bible to strengthen her arguments. In one essay she used the book of Revelation to claim that rebellion would be used by God to punish slaveholders.

Being an African American woman in pre-Civil War America she faced many obstacles in furthering her causes and was even discouraged by some of her friends. This never stopped her from pushing further. Throughout her life she argued for equal rights between blacks and whites while also encouraging women to leave the domestic sphere and become educated.

Stewart died in December of 1879 after a life as an activist, abolitionist, writer and teacher.•

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