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Maria W. Stewart, Ethnologist and Proto-Black Feminist

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 March 2022

Jameliah Inga Shorter-Bourhanou
Jameliah Inga Shorter-Bourhanou*
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy, College of the Holy Cross, 1 College Street, Worcester, MA 01610
*
Corresponding author. jshorter@holycross.edu
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Abstract

Discussions about nineteenth-century African American ethnology tend to focus only on black male thinkers. In the nineteenth century, ethnology was the study of difference among humans and often used racist science to justify discrimination against blacks. Black woman thinker Maria W. Stewart (1803–1879) made important contributions to ethnology but remains understudied. I argue that Stewart is a black feminist ethnologist because she aligns herself with her black male interlocutors on the core points of ethnology. Yet Stewart adds a distinctly black feminist position to the conversation. By focusing on Stewart's speech “An Address Delivered to the African Masonic Hall” (1833), I show that she concurs with her contemporaries that black people are inherently great because of their genealogical connection to Africa. Stewart also agrees that the inherent greatness of blacks establishes their claim to sociopolitical rights. I argue that Stewart's call for racial unity makes her a proto-black feminist and is a unique feature of her contribution to African American ethnology. Stewart's call demands that white people be held responsible for the harm that they have caused to blacks, which can be remedied by the races coming together on equal footing.

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Article
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Hypatia , Volume 37 , Issue 1 , Winter 2022 , pp. 60 - 75
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Hypatia, a Nonprofit Corporation

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