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| Most of our color have dragged out a miserable existence of servitude from the cradle to the grave. And what literary acquirements can be made, or useful knowledge derived, from either maps, books or charm, by those who continually drudge from Monday morning until Sunday noon? O, ye fairer sisters, whose hands are never soiled, whose nerves and muscles are never strained, go learn by experience! | Most Black people spend their entire lives serving white people. What possible education can someone get when they work every day of the week? Oh white sisters, who never have to work hard, go try it and see how it is. |
| Had we had the opportunity that you have had, to improve our moral and mental faculties, what would have hindered our intellects from being as bright, and our manners from being as dignified as yours? Had it been our lot to have been nursed in the lap of affluence and ease, and to have basked beneath the smiles and sunshine of fortune, should we not have naturally supposed that we were never made to toil? And why are not our forms as delicate, and our constitutions as slender, as yours? Is not the workmanship as curious and complete? | If we had the opportunity to learn like white people, what could have stopped us from being a smart and dignified as you? If we were born rich, and lived lives of good fortune, wouldn’t we also think that were not built to work? And why aren’t we as delicate as you? Don’t we have the same bodies? |
| Have pity upon us, have pity upon us, O ye who have hearts to feel for other’s woes; for the hand of God has touched us. Owing to the disadvantages under which we labor, there are many flowers among us that are
…born to bloom unseen, And waste their fragrance on the desert air. |
Have pity on us, all of you who have hearts that feel for others. The hand of God has touched us. Because of the disadvantages we live under, many of us will never reach our full potential. |
| Do you ask, why are you wretched and miserable? I reply, look at many of the most worthy and interesting of us doomed to spend our lives in gentlemen’s kitchens. Look at our young men, smart, active and energetic, with souls filled with ambitious fire; if they look forward, alas! what are their prospects? | Do you ask why we are miserable? I answer, because our best and brightest are doomed to waste our lives working in someone else’s kitchen. Look at our young, smart, active, and ambitious men. What do they have to look forward to? |
Excerpt from “Why Sit Ye Here and Die?”
Maria W. Stewart, “Why Sit Ye Here and Die?,” 1832. Blackpast.org.
Background
Maria W. Stewart was a Black abolitionist who came to fame writing for William Lloyd Garrison’s antislavery newspaper The Liberator. She was one of the first women to speak publicly to mixed audiences of white men and women. Her lectures made audiences uncomfortable both because she was a woman, and because she did not shy away from telling hard truths. Public scrutiny was so high that she retired after only four lectures. William Lloyd Garrison published Maria’s speeches, essays, and poems in 1835. This publication reached a wide audience and inspired other women to become public speakers.
About the Document
This is an excerpt from Maria W. Stewart’s second lecture, “Why Sit Ye Here and Die.” She gave this speech at Franklin Hall in Boston on September 21, 1832. In this section, Maria asks her white listeners to acknowledge that free Black people are barely better off than enslaved people. She explains that this is because widespread racism robs free Black Americans of most opportunities to succeed. This was a radical message for an audience of white Northerners. At this time, most white Northerners preferred to believe they were superior because they lived in states that had abolished slavery.
Vocabulary
- abolitionist: A person who wanted to end the practice of slavery in the U.S.
- The Liberator: The most widely circulated antislavery newspaper
- William Lloyd Garrison: One of the white leaders of the abolition movement
Discussion Questions
- According to Maria W. Stewart, why did free Black people struggle to improve their place in society in the 1830s?
- What does Maria W. Stewart want her audience to do to improve the status of free Black Americans?
- Why was this a radical message in 1830?
Suggested Activities
- Pair this document together with No Place for Black Women, and then ask students to write a short essay about the particular challenges faced by Black women in the first half of the 1800s.
- Maria W. Stewart delivered her radical message about the treatment of Black Americans in 1832. Thirty-four years later, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper asked white suffragists to consider the particular plight of Black women at the dawn of the Reconstruction era. Ask students to compare and contrast these two speeches and then discuss how much had changed in the intervening years, and how much remained the same.
- For a larger lesson about Black women’s activism in the mid-1800s, combine this life story with the following:
- To learn more about the experiences of enslaved and free Black women in the antebellum period, see:
Themes
ACTIVISM AND SOCIAL CHANGE
