Sarah & Angelina Grimke

Sarah - 26th November, 1792 - 1873

Angelina Grimke Weld - 1803 - 26th October, 1879

Angelina and Sarah were sisters born in South Carolina to slaveowners.  Both became convinced of the fundamental immortality of slavery, and in the process, became feminists.  They moved to the North and became Quakers, and somewhat inadvertently became public figures when William Lloyd Garrison published one of Angelina's anti-slavery letters without her knowledge.  The sisters became lecturers and prolific writers on the subject of abolition, and were the first women to campaign against slavery in the "public sphere."  Not only did they advocate abolition; they also denounced racial prejudice in general, a move few white abolitionists were willing to make.  They also argued that white women should feel a particular sympathy for slave women, since they labored under a similar oppression, and on the basis of their common womanhood.  As a result of having transgressed the gender taboo, the sisters were subjected to violent criticism on the grounds that women were not supposed to be politically or publicly active.  Thus, the two became early American feminists, incorporating their meditations on the moral rights and duties of women in their writings on slavery.  Angelina's most famous effort in the joint cause of blacks and women is Letters to Catharine Beecher; Sarah's feminist manifesto is Letters on the Equality of the Sexes.  (It is interesting that while both women broke through the gender barriers in terms of public speaking, they nonetheless preferred the more traditionally feminine literary genre of letters.)  Angelina married fellow-abolitionist Theodore Weld, and settled in New Jersey, where she and her sister opened a school and continued their labors "in the bonds of sisterhood," to borrow a favorite phrase from Sarah (referring to the status of women, not to Angelina).    

The Grimke-Beecher Exchange:  http://www.iath.virginia.edu/utc/abolitn/grimkehp.html  Angelina Grimke's essay, an Appeal to the Christian Women of the South, elicited a text by Catharine Beecher denouncing (somewhat inconsistently) women taking a public approach to abolition.  In response, Angelina wrote a series of published letters to Beecher, expounding on her position.  This website provides e-texts of the first two documents, and several of Grimke's letters, besides.

Angelina's speech, given in the midst of a pro-slavery riot:  http://www.startribune.com/stories/1389/646147.html 

An excellent and comprehensive biographical sketch of the sisters at Sunshine for Women:  http://www.pinn.net/~sunshine/whm2000/grimke4.html

Sarah's Letters on Equality - http://www.pinn.net/~sunshine/book-sum/grimke3.html 

Note:  Do not confuse Angelina Grimke Weld with Angelina Weld Grimke, early 20th-century black playwright and author.