Maria W. Stewart gave a very powerful lecture in Boston in 1832. In 1832 it may of been hard to associate the atributes of educator and writer with an African American however an African American educator and writer is exactly was Ms. Stewart was. Her desperate and emotional tone conveys her position on equality beween whites and blacks. Her plea for the equal treatment and equal oppertunity for both african americans and whites is helped by her expert use of language, unarguable evidence, and pure raw emotion to craft this message.
Stewart’s desperateness in her language imediately grabs the attention of her audience. She desires to spread this message so badly that she without hesitation, goes directly to the main point of her lecture. She begins with “few whites are willing to spend their lives” in “servile labor” which belittles the whites methods because they force her people to do just that. How she does not want to talk about anthing other then her cause for equality that shows how desperate her plea really is.
She even would “hail death as a welcome messenger” if she could “rise above the condition of a servant” which lets you know her extreme care for this cause. The quickness of getting strait to her point sets such an emotional and desperate tone. Stewart gives such vivid details and evidence of such a true hardship that can’t be denied challenges the beliefs of whites which automatically locks the audences ears to pay attention to every word.
Her trials of being “confined” by “chains of ignorance and poverty” and her people’s aflictions of “continual drudgery and toil” is undeniable proof that her people have been mistreated. She believes this mistreatment is undeserved and unfair so much so that she “is willing die by the sword of pestilence” because she “is a true born American” and isn’t given the rights of one. Next, She defends her people by “confuting” a “published work respecting” her kind and the asertion that her race is “lazy and idle”.
The audiance must have been astonished by the boldness Ms. Stewart presents to defend her people when most African Americans in her position would just let it be. Stewart then proclaims why African Americans deserve equal rights. She states that though whites may think of African Americans as “ragged” their “souls have caught onto the flame” of the “theme of equal rights and privaledges” that “the whites have so long and loudly proclaimed” which adds more evidence that is justified.
Stewart’s feels her people are united because of their “common desire to rise above the conditions of servants”. She also declares a reason for the false assertions of lazyness and idleness by saying “continual hard labor” drains “energies from the soul” which implies that if each race’s positions were reversed then the “mind” of the whites would be “barren” as well. She keeps repeating the statement “continual hard labor” to glue it to each of the audience’s brains to give them a small glimps into how long and how much hard work her people have experienced.
Stewart uses such raw emotion and such a desperate tone that her audience aknoledges the fact that her people, even the free, do not “have an oppertunity of becoming rich and independent” but should. She so desperately desires equality but as “servants” they are not allowed to “aspire any higher”. No one can deny her absolute truths and experiences. Stewart coveyed her position with her desperate tone, raw emotion, and unrefutable evidence procisely and perfectly to show that African Americans deserve to be treated equally.
