The women’s section of William Lloyd Garrison’s the Liberator, called the “Ladies Department.” www.goddesscafe.com

As an African-American woman, Maria Stewart endured many challenges. Briefly educated by a clergyman before she entered domestic service, Stewart became a steadfast evangelical Christian. In 1831, a widowed Stewart sent a selection of her abolitionist essays to William Lloyd Garrison, the renowned editor of the premier Boston abolitionist periodical, the Liberator. Garrison was so impressed by her religiously-charged calls for the abolition of slavery that he published her essays in his newspaper and distributed them in pamphlet form. However, the male leaders of the free black community were hostile to the notion of a publicly outspoken female journalist. Their criticism and prejudice forced Stewart to leave Boston and abandon her brief career in journalism by 1833. Even so, Stewart's passionate journalistic style secured her place in history as the first recorded African-American female journalist.

Abolitionist publisher Mary Ann Shadd Cary. Library and Archives Canada C-029977

Mary Ann Shadd Cary overcame hostility to become the first black female newspaper publisher in the world. Born to free blacks in Philadelphia in 1823, she was educated in Quaker schools and taught until age 27. After Congress passed the 1850 Fugitive Slave Law that endangered all African-Americans, she and her family fled to Canada . She taught in Toronto until 1853, when she established the Provincial Freeman , a weekly publication aimed at other blacks living in Canada 's provinces. It was a struggle to maintain the press, especially in the face of criticism from black men, but Frederick Douglass rallied to her support in 1856: “This lady, with very limited assistance from others, has sustained the Provincial Freeman for more than two years. She has had to contend with lukewarmness, false friends, open enemies, ignorance and small pecuniary means…We do not know her equal among the colored ladies of the United States .” When the Civil War began, Cary risked her freedom to return to the United States and recruit black soldiers. Although she never published another newspaper, she was active in the cause of women's rights until her 1893 death.