The Collected Meditations of Mrs. Maria W. Stewart


Book Description

The Collected Meditations of Mrs. Maria W. Stewart (2021) compiles the speeches and writings of Maria W. Stewart. This groundbreaking collection includes some of the best works from across Stewart’s career as the first African American public lecturer, including Meditations from the Pen of Mrs. Maria Stewart, her 1832 speech delivered at the Franklin Hall, her address delivered before the African American Female Intelligence Society, and her lecture delivered at the African Masonic Hall in 1833. “Many will suffer for pleading the cause of oppressed Africa, and I shall glory in being one of her martyrs; for I am firmly persuaded that the God in whom I trust is able to protect me from the rage and malice of mine enemies, and from them that will rise up against me; and if there is no other way for me to escape, He is able to take me to himself...” In the brief span of five years, Stewart became one of Boston’s most prominent lecturers on abolition and women’s rights, passionately condemning the institution of slavery while calling attention to the racism faced by free African Americans living in the north. This collection places some of her best-known speeches alongside her highly regarded meditations, personal reflections on life as a Black woman in nineteenth century America. A keen observer of political events and a powerful voice against oppression of all kinds, Maria W. Stewart remains relatively unknown despite her prominent role in the movements for abolition and women’s rights. With a beautifully designed cover and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of The Collected Meditations of Mrs. Maria W. Stewart is a classic of African American literature reimagined for modern readers.




Maria W. Stewart and the Roots of Black Political Thought


Book Description

Named a 2022 finalist for the Pauli Murray Book Prize in Black Intellectual History from the African American Intellectual History Society Maria W. Stewart and the Roots of Black Political Thought tells a crucial, almost-forgotten story of African Americans of early nineteenth-century America. In 1833, Maria W. Stewart (1803–1879) told a gathering at the African Masonic Hall on Boston’s Beacon Hill: “African rights and liberty is a subject that ought to fire the breast of every free man of color in these United States.” She exhorted her audience to embrace the idea that the founding principles of the nation must extend to people of color. Otherwise, those truths are merely the hypocritical expression of an ungodly white power, a travesty of original democratic ideals. Like her mentor, David Walker, Stewart illustrated the practical inconsistencies of classical liberalism as enacted in the US and delivered a call to action for ending racism and addressing gender discrimination. Between 1831 and 1833, Stewart’s intellectual productions, as she called them, ranged across topics from true emancipation for African Americans, the Black convention movement, the hypocrisy of white Christianity, Black liberation theology, and gender inequity. Along with Walker’s Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World, her body of work constitutes a significant foundation for a moral and political theory that is finding new resonance today—insurrectionist ethics. In this work of recovery, author Kristin Waters examines the roots of Black political activism in the petition movement; Prince Hall and the creation of the first Black masonic lodges; the Black Baptist movement spearheaded by the brothers Thomas, Benjamin, and Nathaniel Paul; writings; sermons; and the practices of festival days, through the story of this remarkable but largely unheralded woman and pioneering public intellectual.




Provisions


Book Description

"This valuable collection . . . should shift the ground of discourse on mid-19th-century American literature." —Publishers Weekly This unique collection has recovered for us the work of sixteen women who wrote during the years when American writers were developing their distinctive styles and voices.




Word, Like Fire


Book Description

Maria Stewart is believed by many to have been the first American woman of any race to give public political speeches. In Word, Like Fire, Valerie C. Cooper argues that the religious, political, and social threads of Maria Stewart's thought are tightly interwoven, such that focusing narrowly on any one aspect would be to misunderstand her rhetoric. Cooper demonstrates how a certain kind of biblical interpretation can be a Rosetta Stone for understanding various areas of African American life and thought that still resonate today.




Maria W. Stewart, America's First Black Woman Political Writer


Book Description

" . . . enthusiastic, well-written . . . read it if you want to be inspired by a truly heroic woman." —New Directions for Women " . . . the fullest account to date of Stewart's life and an excellent basis for understanding Stewart's work." —History "This is informative and inspiring source material for today's scholars, lay readers, and 'professionals' . . . " —Journal of American History In gathering and introducing Stewart's works, Richardson provides an opportunity for readers to study the thoughts and words of this influential early black female activist, a forerunner to Frederick Douglass and Sojourner Truth and the first black American to lecture in defense of women's rights, placing her in the context of the swirling abolitionist movement.




African-American Orators


Book Description

This long-needed sourcebook assesses the unique styles and themes of notable African-American orators from the mid-19th century to the present—of 43 representative public speakers, from W.E.B. Du Bois and Ida B. Wells-Barnett, Martin Luther King Jr. and Jesse Jackson to Barbara Jordan and Thurgood Marshall. The critical analyses of the oratory of a broad segment of different types of public speakers demonstrate how they have stressed the historical search for freedom, upheld American ideals while condemning discriminatory practices against African-Americans, and have spoken in behalf of black pride. This biographical dictionary with its evaluative essays, sources for further reading, and speech chronologies is designed for broad interdisciplinary use by students, teachers, activists, and general readers in college, university, institutional, and public libraries.




Lift Every Voice


Book Description

An anthology comprising 150-plus selections, making accessible the orations of both well-known and lesser-known African Americans. Each speech is presented with an introduction that sets the context. Many are previously unpublished, uncollected, or long out of print. The volume is based on Philip Foner's 1972 Voice of Black America. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR




The Cambridge History of African American Literature


Book Description

The first major twenty-first century history of four hundred years of black writing, The Cambridge History of African American Literature presents a comprehensive overview of the literary traditions, oral and print, of African-descended peoples in the United States. Expert contributors, drawn from the United States and beyond, emphasise the dual nature of each text discussed as a work of art created by an individual and as a response to unfolding events in American cultural, political, and social history. Unprecedented in scope, sophistication and accessibility, the volume draws together current scholarship in the field. It also looks ahead to suggest new approaches, new areas of study, and as yet undervalued writers and works. The Cambridge History of African American Literature is a major achievement both as a work of reference and as a compelling narrative and will remain essential reading for scholars and students in years to come.




Raising Her Voice


Book Description

Each chapter is a biographical sketch of an influential black woman who has written for American newspapers or television news, including Maria W. Stewart, Mary Ann Shadd Cary, Gertrude Bustill Mossell, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, Josephine St.Pierre Ruffin, Delilah L. Beasley, Marvel Cooke, Charlotta A. Bass, Alice Allison Dunnigan, Ethel L. Payne, and Charlayne Hunter-Gault.