Maria W. Stewart was a trailblazing political philosopher and social reformer, who migrated from the Connecticut of her birth, south to Baltimore and then Washington, D.C. on the eve of the Civil War. Stewart was a free-born African American who became a teacher, journalist, lecturer, abolitionist, and women's rights activist. The first known American woman to speak to a mixed audience of men and women, white and black, she was also the first Black woman to make public lectures, as well as to lecture about women's rights and make a public anti-slavery speech.

Maria W. Stewart: Essential Writings of a 19th-Century Black Abolitionist offers the most comprehensive and contextually dynamic collection of Stewart's fascinating corpus to date. In addition to including an intellectual biography on this formidable female historical figure. Douglas A. Jones brings together Stewart's known essays, lectures, and fiction, including recently discovered texts, all of which directly influenced other major black abolitionist contemporaries, including Frederick Douglass and many others. The volume's extended introduction and detailed notes situate Stewart's then-radical political philosophy in the rich intellectual contexts in which she worked, including abolitionism, black nationalism, feminism, and sentimentalism.

Douglas A. Jones is associate professor of English, Theater Studies, and African and African American Studies. He is also author of Pragmatics of Democracy: A Political Theory of African American Literature before Emancipation.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Part One: Gender Theory

Contextual Works
1. Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia, Query XIV
2. Angelina Grimké, Appeal to the Christian Women of the South (selections)
3. Louisa Piquet and Hiram Mattison, Louisa Picquet, the Octoroon, or, Inside Views of Southern Domestic Life (selections)
4. Alexander Crummell, "The Black Woman of the South: Her Neglects and Her Needs"
5. Anna Julia Cooper, "Womanhood: A Vital Element in the Regeneration and Progress of a Race"

Stewart's Works
6. "Lecture Delivered at Franklin Hall"
7. "An Address Delivered Before the Afric-American Female Intelligence Society of Boston"
8. "Mrs. Stewart's Farewell Address to Her Friends in the City of Boston"

Part Two: Racial Ethics

Contextual Works
9. David Walker, Walker's Appeal, in Four Articles: Together with a Preamble, to the Coloured Citizens of the World, But in Particular, and Very Expressly, to Those of the United States of America (selections)
10. "Zillah" (Sarah Mapps Douglass) writings published in The Liberator
11. Hosea Easton A Treatise On the Intellectual Character, and Civil and Political Condition of the Colored People of the U. States; And the Prejudice Exercised Towards Them; With A Sermon on the Duty of the Church To Them (selections)
12. Selections from Mary Ann Shadd Cary

Stewart's Works
13. "Religion and the Pure Principles of Morality"
14. "Cause for Encouragement"
15. "An Address Delivered at The African Masonic Hall"
16. "The Proper Training of Children"

Part Three: Literary Productions

Contextual Works
17. Jarena Lee, The Life and Religious Experience of Jarena Lee (selections)
18. William J. Wilson ("Ethiop"), "From Our Brooklyn Correspondent"
19. Frances Ellen Watkins (Harper), "Two Offers" and "Aunt Chloe's Politics"
20. Charlotte Forten, "Life on the Sea Islands"

Stewart's Works
21. Meditation VI
22. "The Negro's Complaint"
23. "The First Stage of Life"
24. "Sufferings During the War"

Index