"In their long, continuing struggle for equality, American women have had to rely primarily on their own resources, which have been considerable. Yet many men have helped advance their cause.

"Maria W. Stewart and the Roots of Black Political Thought tells a crucial, almost-forgotten story of African Americans of early nineteenth-century America. In 1833, Maria Stewart (1803-1879) told a gathering at the African Masonic Hall on Boston's Beacon Hill: 'African rights and liberty is a subject that ought to fire the breast of every free man of color in these United States.' She exhorted her audience to embrace the idea that the founding principles...