Maria Stewart

Maria Stewart was the first American-born woman to lecture publicly when from 1831 to 1833 she delivered a series of lectures demanding freedom for slaves and also self-improvement for the free blacks of the North through education, hard work and equal opportunity. Born in Hartford, Conn., in 1803, she was orphaned at age 5 and bound out to a clergyman's family for 10 years. She educationed herself by reading in the minister's library. She married at 21, was widowed at 26; defrauded of her inheritance, she supported herself the rest of her life. She sold devotional tracts to William Garrison's paper and lectured until public outcry about the impropiety of women speaking in public became unbearable. Her speeches suggest that their content was as disturbing as her sex. She used biblical and historical women to inspire black women to fight prejudice, ignorance and poverty, for "Knowledge is Power." Further, she said that free black men of wit, talent and success had a duty to aid those still in bondage.
Stewart moved to New York and taught in public schools in Brooklyn and Manhattan. In 1852 she opened a school in Baltimore, teaching "reading, writing, mental and practical arithmetic ... for 50 cents per month" per subject. In 1863 she started a Sunday School for poor children who lived near Freedmen's Hospital in Washington where she worked as matron. College students from nearby Howard University sometimes assisted at this school. Maria Stewart died on December 17, 1879. Her writings and speeches convinced Garrison to take a militant view on emancipation.