Every day this month, the Center for Black Educator Development, in partnership with Education Post and Philly’s 7th Ward, will highlight a Black Educator Hall of Famer.
But, don’t forget, e’ry month is Black History Month and February is just the Blackest. All year are ongoing opportunities to learn and teach and the colossal impact Black educators have had on society.
Today, our featured Black educator is Maria W. Stewart.
Maria W. Stewart was born in Hartford, Connecticut in 1803. She was born a free African-American woman who was orphaned at age five after losing both of her parents. As a result, she became an indentured servant and worked for white clergymen until the age of 15. She did attend a religious school but she’s self-taught as a reader and writer.
While Stewart worked to secure herself financially after white executors of her husband’s will stole the inheritance left for her, she heard a call from William Lloyd Garrison, publisher of The Liberator; requesting for Black women to write for the abolitionist newspaper. Stewart heeded the call. She met with Garrison to share numerous essays of hers which he agreed to publish.
Garrison published Stewart’s first pamphlet in 1831 titled “Religion and the Pure Principles of Morality,” where she called upon Black people to organize against enslavement in the South and to resist racism in the North. Stewart made her first public appearance a year later, speaking to the African-American Female Intelligence Society of Boston. Her second speech was to the New England Anti-Slavery Society.
In both speeches, she urged Black people to stand up for themselves and questioned the spirit behind emigration to Africa. However, powerful Stewart’s words were, she was targeted because traditionally at this time it was taboo for women to speak in public. Unfortunately, she relented due to public pressure and she retired from public speaking in 1833 just a few years after that career had begun. But she turned her attention to another important endeavor; teaching.
She moved from Boston to New York City, teaching in public schools. Not only was this her avenue to support herself financially, but Stewart also believed that “all African-Americans, both men and women deserve the chance to acquire an education” and have speech is often referred to literacy as a sacred quest at a time when it was a crime to teach enslaved persons to read or right. Stewart taught in Manhattan, Long Island, and Brooklyn and rose to the ranks of assistant principal of the Williamsburg School in Brooklyn.
While teaching, she also continued political activities and speaking occasionally. In 1852 she moved to Baltimore and continued to teach however she taught privately. After Baltimore, she moved to Washington D.C. where she created a school for children and families that had escaped enslavement during the Civil War. In the early 1870s, she was appointed the head matron at the Freedman’s Hospital and Asylum in Washington D.C. and she continued teaching those in the hospital.
Maria Stewart is an amazing example of how one fuses political activism and education. Her commitment to African Americans inspired all of her work throughout her life. She remains an inspiration to all those who rightfully see education as a means of overcoming. Stewart defined stereotypes and conventional norms in her quest to show African Americans that they were more than what others said.
Maria W. Stewart; a member of the Black Educator Hall of Fame.
For more information on Maria W. Stewart, visit the following site.
