The Stewart Sisters v. The Steamer Sue

JT-25

On 15 Aug. 1884, Virginia-born sisters Martha and Winnie Stewart, Mary Johnson, and Lucy Jones were denied first-class quarters because of their race when traveling on the steamer Sue from Baltimore to visit family in Kinsale. With support from the Rev. Harvey Johnson, they filed suit in federal court asserting that segregated quarters were illegal and that the Sue’s were unequal. The trial court’s ruling that segregation was reasonable but giving the sisters $100 each because the quarters were unequal was affirmed on appeal. The case, one of many brought by Black women in the late 1800s, was an impetus for the creation of the Mutual United Brotherhood of Liberty, a forerunner of the NAACP.

Department of Historic Resources, 2024

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References/Bibliographic Citation:

Martha Stewart et al v. The Steamer Sue, U.S. District Court, 29 Jan. 1885. Alexandria Gazette, 30 Jan. 1885. Baltimore Afro-American, 7 March 1914. Baltimore Sun, 3 Feb. 1885. Northern Neck News, 6 Feb. 1885. W. Ashbie Hawkins, “Harvey Johnson’s Contribution to the Life of Baltimore,” Nov. 1922. Charles H. Withers, “The Stewart Sisters v. The Steamer Sue: Nineteenth-Century Black Female Activism,” Social Education vol. 84, no. 1 (2020): 24-30. Barbara Y. Welke, “When all the Women Were White, and All the Blacks Were Men: Gender, Class, Race, and the Road to Plessy, 1855-1914,” American Society for Legal History vol. 13, no. 2 (Autumn 1995): 261-316. Dennis Patrick Halpin, A Brotherhood of Liberty: Black Reconstruction: Black Reconstruction and its Legacies in Baltimore, 1865-1920 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019).