Reading Response #5

Arielle Robinson

The University of Memphis

ENGL-7/8329: African-American Literature: Beginnings to 1850

Dr. Shelby Crosby

Maria W. Stewart, America’s First Black Woman Political Writer: A Move

Toward Freedom of Mind and Spirit

Introduction

Maria Stewart, the first African American woman to champion women’s rights, developed the characteristics of women to be encouraged, by planning for their future and to seek the responsibility that has been bestowed upon them through their religious and political stance in their own communities.  Born in Hartford Connecticut in 1803, Stewart was deemed an orphan and was deprived of an education that ultimately declared her desire to become educated in the sphere of American activism. Stewart thirsted for knowledge at an early age which emancipated her works in her essays and speeches in the time of her religious conversion. Stewart’s Farewell Address, delivered in late 1833, contains Stewart’s fullest discussion of the rights of women. Stewart wanted Black women to “develop their highest intellectual capacities to enter into all spheres of the mind.” Stewart constructed her appeal from biblical, classical, and historical sources. In part one of Stuart’s essays and speeches, the reader is introduced with the exchanging of vows of Maria Miller and James W. Stewart. They were a part of Boston’s small black middle class between 1820-1830. These “Blacks” were made up of laborers, cooks, launderesses and proprietors of boarding houses as well as ministers in the community known as “Nigger Hill.”  Part One of Stewart’s political work demonstrated the arguments of colonization as well as the rationale of a broken and enslaved society. In part two of Stewart’s essays and speeches, Stewart addresses and rhetorically administers her redress of her religious and political stance of the notion of an apologetic liberation of white supremacy.

Who is Maria Stewart?

The death of Stuart’s husband led to a divine reassurance and understanding from God during her time at

First African Baptist Church where she underwent a spiritual conversion. This conversion known as “black conversion” iterated her new religious individuation. Stewart was “brought to the knowledge of the truth, as it is in Jesus” in 1830, and made a public profession of her faith in Christ in 1831. Stuart feared that this calling would disagree with the acts and behaviors of the world. “Her claim that God communicated with her directly…was an order to obey God, she had to act in contradiction to the secular identity to which she had once aspired” (Stewart, 26).  Stuart began to speak out and to write on the tyranny, victimization, and injustice of women. Stuart’s vision for women, to follow their men and build the capacity of motherhood and womanhood in which, “created in the minds of boys and girls piety, purity, and submissiveness” in the community. Stuart’s political urgency was to pursue education “ as a means to fulfill their destinies.”

Stuart’s essay, according to the text, “called for the liberation of all human potential, black and white, male and female, “many of the themes and images throughout her political essays and lectures were drawn from the prophet of Jeremiah and from the Book of Lamentations.” Stuart built her arguments of divine sanction from the old and new testaments, testifying the position of woman. “Many think, because your skins are tinged with a sable hue, that you are an inferior race of beings; but God does not consider you as such, He hath formed and fashioned you in his own glorious image, and hath bestowed upon you reason and strong powers of intellect. He hath made you to have dominion over the beasts of the field, the fowls of the air, and the fish of the sea [Genesis 1:26].Stuart called for an institution “built by and for black women” where the  black community was dominated by all males. The Juvenile Colored Association of Boston leveraged its opportunities to “decent, sober, and industrious men who advanced social and cultural advancements in New Haven Connecticut in 1831.  This in itself was also Stewart’s plan for educational and human progression of colored people. 

Influences

Maria Stuart influences rivaled her boisterous and religious “bayonet” of colonization and “emphatic support of justification, that Blacks helped build this country. These influences challenged the conditions of slavery in America and demanded the natural rights born to them through and by spiritual awakenings, religious conversions, and political uproar.  “It is, however, in the example of certain women from the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance, that Stewart found her strongest personal justification” (Stewart, 23). Like Zilpha Elaw and Jarena Lee, Stewart’s conversion was feared that God would place her in conflict with the ways of the world. Stewart felt these indignations affecting her life, community and nation. “ Her summary statement of the unity of the religious and feminist vision connecting her with these heroines of the past posits a religious spirit…has made them by turns martyrs, apostles, warriors…and divine scholars” (Stewart, 23). David Walker (1785-1830) A free born slave demonstrated clamor, by a boisterous outcry, marveled Stewart in the acts of their “militant activism.” These activists wrote clearly on the rights and freedom of Blacks unbeknownst to their free individualism, dominating the political community with their writings of injustice and social malice. Stewart feared her fate of militant action would cause her life to be of similar consequences as Walker, “pleading the cause of oppressed Africa.” 

Maria Stewart works of activism established the cowardice, ignorance, and lack of ambition of the black society in which it prohibited progression and therefore less defiant of blacks in societal contributions. Stuart wanted women to participate in all aspects of community, from religion and education, to politics and business without the apologetic gestures to female subservience.  In New York, Stewart continued her political aspirations, joining women’s organizations and conventions in the year of 1837. According to the text, she was also a part of the Women’s Anti-Slavery Convention and a part of the Women’s Literary Society.  “The volume of her collected work, Productions of Mrs. Maria W. Stewart, was advertised for sale with the major anti-slavery and human rights writings of the abolitionist movement.” Black and whites came to adhere to the writings by proclaiming liberation and justice. 

Cause For Encouragement

Stewart addresses the benevolent notion of freedom for her people by praying for the remediation of whites enslaving the bodies and minds of Africans and for the ramification of her people in a “speedy recovery” of enslavement as a social and political injustice. Stewart employs the downfall of nations because of the injustice, sin, and anger of their inhabitants. “On the other hand, shall we not convince them that our souls respond with theirs…”

Lecture Delivered At The Franklin Hall

“Why sit ye here and die? If we say we will go to a foreign land, the famine and the pestilence are there, and there we shall die. If we sit here, we shall die” (Stewart, 45).Stewart details how the horrors of slavery and  the ebony hues denotes the servitude of her people. Stewart admits she might be erroneous in her assumptions of generality of deliverance by means of spiritual interrogation. “ I can but die for expressing my sentiments and I am as willing to die by the sword as the pestilence for I am a true born American, your blood flows in my veins, and your spirit fires my breast.” Stewart’s argument sets the tone for ultimate debate, where there is hope of liberation as well as justification for the “sins of the souls of white.”

An Address Before The Afric-American Female Intelligence Society of America

 Stewart addresses the sentiment that as a people, “we should have been a different people, from what we are now.”  Stewart argues that blacks would like to make friends, “we are their friends, not their enemies.” This argument resonates with me because it does in fact provide justification of slavery and human  dominance. “ I fear neither men nor devils, for the God in whom I trust is able to deliver me from the rage and malice of my enemies, and from them that rise up against me.”

An Address Delivered At The African Masonic Hall

Stewart’s addresses the capacity of the human mind, body, and soul of African-Americans. This address delivers a prominent activation of liberation and a plea to the freedom of the mind, for the enslaved and compromised. The capacity to be educated and dominate in the sphere of intellect and domesticity. “ It must have been the want of ambition and force that has given the witness occasion to say that our natural abilities are not as good, and our capacities by nature inferior to theirs.” This sentiment resonates with me as well because it does admit to the confirmation of the given notion of domesticity, servitude, dignity, and ultimately, power. Stewart argues this, “ they [whites] say that we are not capable of becoming like white men, and that we can NEVER rise to respectability of this country.” 

Mrs. Stewart’s Farewell Address To Her Friends In The City of Boston and Later Life

Maria Stewart announces the work of reformation, the “dark clouds of ignorance dispersing,” knowledge beginning to flow. Stewart reaches a point where she sees the eradication in 1879, then in her middle seventies, during the Civil War.  Stewart looks back on her sufferings from the war, in which she recollects acts of kindness as well as rebellion of the many Christians Stewart’s work of black women’s autobiography and fiction emancipated development and identity, in which  her“imaginative documents” experimented narrative techniques. 

Stewart demonstrated themes on “didactic illustrations” and “evils of racism,” and the respectability if black women. Stewart’s works actively and persuasively announced the desire of her prophetic deliverance as well as the vindication of her visions, career, and mission in the 1830’s. Stewart’s essays eradicated national upheaval just as David Walker’s Appeal to the masses.  In 1870 , Maria Stewart was appointed Matron of the Freedmen's Hospital in Washington, DC. Maria Stewart demonstrated excellence and fervor as well as dedication to the cause of intellectual freedom. She fought for the progression of women and blacks advocating for peace and equality.