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Austin Steward

Name: Austin Steward

Birthplace: VA

Status: Fugitive slave

Occupation/Training: Grocer, Reformer, Speaker

Residence: NY, Canada

Abolitionist Involvement: Steward had been a house servant of the Helm family in Virginia. As a result of his experiences, he became a conductor for the Underground Railroad in Rochester, NY, aiding other fugitive slaves, and eventually published his autobiography, Twenty-Two Years a Slave, and Forty Years a Freeman in 1857.

For several years, Blacks celebrated freedom on July 5th, rather than on the national July 4thIndependence Day holiday. At one such Emancipation Day celebration, held at the public square in Rochester, NY in 1827, Steward was one of the featured speakers. A few years later, this celebration was disbanded due to disillusionment on the part of Blacks over the freedoms which it appeared were not intended for them. (The celebration was held again twenty-seven years later for a single time, and Steward, then an elderly man, was given a seat of honor on the stage with Frederick Douglass, Henry Highland Garnet and Lucretia Mott.)

In 1830, shortly after David Walker's 'Appeal' appeared, the first National Convention of Negroes was convened in Philadelphia to discuss the political state of Black America. Steward was one of the leading delegates at the convention. These delegates were known from that time forward as "The Forty Immortals." In 1840, he was president of a statewide New York convention held in Albany to discuss the lack of Black suffrage. After the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act, he was for a time president of the Wilberforce Colony of free blacks in Canada, to which fugitives often emigrated.

Steward's home in Rochester is no longer standing; however, a memorial to his work has been placed at the Genesee Plaza Holiday Inn, 120 East Main Street in Rochester, on the second level where a bridge connects to the convention center.

Publication: Twenty Two Years a Slave, and Forty Years a Freeman

References:Black Abolitionists, by Benjamin Quarles; The Shaping of Black America, by Lerone Bennett; Roll Jordan Roll, by Eugene Genovese; Hippocrene Guide to the Underground Railroad, by Charles Blockson.

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