Maria Louise Baldwin (September 13, 1856 – January 9, 1922)[1] was an American educator and civic leader born and raised in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Du Bois claimed she had achieved the greatest distinction in education to that time of any African-American not working in segregated schools.

From her I marvellingly learned that the truest power is gentleness.She lectured widely to both Euro-American and African American organizations.

Her best-known presentation was her lecture on Harriet Beecher Stowe, which she first delivered as the Annual Washington's Birthday celebration at the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences in 1897.

In the late 1870s, Baldwin joined several Civil Rights groups, becoming a member and secretary of the debate club the Banneker Society, using her position and skills to advocate for women's suffrage and the importance of childhood education.

She also organized and led the Omar Khayyam Circle, a black literary and intellectual group.

[7] Notable members included Clement G. Morgan, William Monroe Trotter, and others who became active in working for civil rights.

While addressing the council of the Robert Gould Shaw House Association at the Copley Plaza Hotel in Boston, on January 9, 1922, she collapsed and died suddenly of heart disease.

Her sister Alice also never married" and lived in all-female households with other black women teachers, and her black women associates included Alice Dunbar Nelson, who literary historian Gloria T. Hull concludes had significant lesbian intimacies.

[14] Weiler speculates: "Perhaps Maria and Alice Baldwin valued their professional lives over marriage, or they may merely have preferred to remain single.