Maria W. Stewart, a free African-American, gave a lecture in Boston, 1832 that explains the lack of rich or affluent black people in the United States. America has been independent from Britain for almost 60 years when this lecture was delivered, and would not fight the Civil War for another 30 years. This Antebellum era was when slavery and its profits made up the entirety of the Southern economy. Free blacks in the North and South were harshly discriminated against, as they could not vote, would not get the job opportunities, and could be forced back into slavery unless able to prove their freedom at any moment. Stewart uses the rhetorical strategies of allusions through similes and parallel structure to prove that the lack of rich or affluent black people in the US was not due to laziness and complacency, but rather oppression caused by white society.…