Maria W. Stewart: Essential Writings of a 19th Century Black Abolitionist - Paperbackby Douglas A. Jones (Editor) 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. She is the first known American woman to offer political lectures before an interracial audience