Мария Стюарт: Пионер движения за права женщин и отмену рабства в США

American teacher, journalist, and activist (1803–1879)

Maria W. Stewart ( Miller) (1803 – December 17, 1879) was an American teacher, journalist, abolitionist and lecturer known for her role in the anti slavery and women's rights movements in the United States. The first known American woman to speak to a mixed audience of men and women, white and black, she was also the first African American woman to make public lectures, as well as to lecture about women's rights and make a public speech opposing slavery. The Liberator published two pamphlets by Stewart: Religion and the Pure Principles of Morality, The Sure Foundation on Which We Must Build (which called for abolition and Black autonomy) in 1831, and another of religious meditations, Meditations from the Pen of Mrs. Maria Stewart (1832). In February 1833, she addressed Boston's African Masonic Lodge, which soon ended her brief lecturing career. Stewart's claim that black men lacked "ambition and requisite courage" caused an uproar among the audience, and she decided to retire from giving lectures. Seven months later, she gave a farewell address at a schoolroom in the African Meeting House ("Paul's Church"). After this, she moved to New York City, then to Baltimore, and finally Washington, D. C., where she worked as a schoolteacher, and then head matron at Freedmen's Hospital, where she eventually died.

Stewart was born Maria Miller, the child of free African American parents in Hartford, Connecticut. In 1806, At the age of three, she lost both parents and was sent to live with a minister and his family. She worked as an indentured servant in that home until she was 15, without receiving any formal education. After leaving the minister's household, she moved to Boston and worked as a domestic servant. Between the ages of 15 and 20, Maria attended Sabbath School before church service on Sundays and developed a lifelong affinity for religious work. On August 10, 1826, Maria Miller married James W. Stewart, an independent shipping agent, before the Reverend Thomas Paul, pastor of the African Meeting House, in Boston, Massachusetts. She took not only his last name, but also his middle initial. The couple had no children and James Stewart died in 1829. James had served in the War of 1812, and eventually a law was passed allowing veterans' widows their husbands' pensions.

Stewart was the first American woman to speak to a mixed audience of men, women, white people and Blacks (termed a "promiscuous" audience during the early 19th century). The first African American woman to lecture about women's rights, Stewart focused particularly on the rights of Black women — religion, and social justice among Black people. She was someone who could be called a Matronist: one of the matriarchs of Black feminist thought during the Jim Crow era. She also became the first African American woman to speak publicly calling for the abolition of slavery. One of the first African American women to make public lectures for which there are still surviving copies, Stewart referred to her public lectures as "speeches" and not "sermons", despite their religious tone and frequent Biblical quotes. African American women preachers of the era, such as Jarena Lee, Julia Foote and Amanda Berry Smith, undoubtedly influenced Stewart, and Sojourner Truth later used a similar style in her public lectures. Stewart delivered her speeches in Boston, to organizations including the African American Female Intelligence Society. David Walker, a prosperous clothing shop owner, who was a well known, outspoken member of the General Colored Association, also influenced Stewart. (A house at 81 Joy Street where from 1827 till 1829 Walker and his wife were tenants subsequently also became home to Stewart.) A leader within Boston's African American enclave, Walker wrote a very controversial piece on race relations entitled David Walker's Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World (1829).

Productions of Mrs. Maria W. Stewart presented to the First African Baptist Church and Society of the City of Boston. Boston: Friends of Freedom and Virtue, 1835. Reprinted from The Liberator, Vol. 2, No. 46 (November 17, 1832), p. 183. "A Lecture at the Franklin Hall, Boston, September 21, 1832" (Productions of Mrs. Maria W. Stewart, pp. 51–56), in: Dorothy Porter (ed. ), Early Negro Writing, 1760 1837, Black Classic Press, 1995; pp. 136–140. "An Address delivered at the African Masonic Hall, Boston, February 27, 1833" (Productions of Mrs. Maria W. Stewart, pp. 63–72), Dorothy Porter (ed. ), Early Negro Writing, 1760 1837, Black Classic Press, 1995; pp. 129–135. As "On African Rights and Liberty", in: Margaret Busby (ed. ), Daughters of Africa, Ballantine Books, 1994, pp. 47–52. Meditations from the Pen of Mrs. Maria W. Stewart: presented to the First African Baptist Church and Society, in the city of Boston. Boston: Printed by Garrison and Knapp, 1879.

Marilyn Richardson, Maria W. Stewart: America's First Black Woman Political Writer, Indiana University Press, 1988. Marilyn Richardson, "Maria W. Stewart," in Feintuch, Burt, and David H. Watters (eds), The Encyclopedia Of New England: The Culture and History of an American Region, Yale University Press, 2005. Marilyn Richardson, "Maria. W. Stewart", Oxford Companion to African American Literature. Oxford University Press, 1997, pp. 379–380. Marilyn Richardson, "'What If I Am A Woman?' Maria W. Stewart's Defense of Black Women's Political Activism", in Donald M. Jacobs (ed. ), Courage and Conscience: Black & White Abolitionists in Boston, Indiana University Press, 1993. Rodger Streitmatter, "Maria W. Stewart: Firebrand of the Abolition Movement", Raising Her Voice: African American Woman Journalists Who Changed History, The University Press of Kentucky, 1994, pp. 15–24.