At the turn of the 19th century, about 60 years before the start of the Civil War, the sisters Sarah and Angelina Grimké were born into a

wealthy, slave-owning, plantation family in Charleston, South Carolina.

Girls born to their social class were expected to live a life of ease, strolling in beautiful, well-tended gardens...

...attending balls, concerts, picnics, dinners, and parties,

all the while wearing the latest fashions.

From cradle to grave, the Grimké’s privileged life was made possible thanks to the house slaves on hand twenty-four hours

a day, seven days a week, to attend to their every whim.

Outside, field slaves toiled on the family’s cotton plantation that made all this possible.

They moved to the North and tirelessly devoted the rest of their lives to campaigning for the abolition of slavery and for women’s rights.

But Sarah and Angelina were not destined to live out the lives of Southern belles. Even as small children, they were horrified by

slavery. They rejected the privileged existence they were born to.

From an early age, the sisters witnessed firsthand the brutal treatment routinely meted out to slaves.

During the cotton harvest, daily lashings were the norm. As a five-year-old, Sarah tried to run away from home to find a place with no slavery.

Later, in their writings and public speeches, the sisters vividly described the brutal treatment of slaves that they had witnessed, ranging from

whippings, to torture, amputations, hangings, and decapitations.

Brutality and violence towards Africans at the hands of their white masters was routine – considered normal and necessary by plantation owners.

Every day of their lives as antislavery activists,

Sarah and Angelina faced harsh criticism,

ostracism, rejection, and threats of violence, but they never wavered on their goal to eradicate slavery from America.

When Sarah was 26 and Angelina was 13, their father became gravely ill. He was advised to seek the care of a specialist in Philadelphia. He asked daughter Sarah to accompany him on his trip.

Sarah Grimké in 1918

The journey to Pennsylvania was to be a major turning point in Sarah’s life. While her father underwent medical treatment, Sarah became acquainted with the Quakers, pacifist Christians who were passionately opposed to slavery.

Sarah converted to Quakerism and immersed herself in absorbing Quaker teachings.

The Germantown Quaker Petition Against Slavery.Written in 1688, it is the oldest public document protesting slavery in America. It is also the first recorded declaration of universal human rights.

After a year in Philadelphia, Sarah’s father died. His death, combined with her time among the Quakers, hardened her determination to work to oppose slavery. She decided to stay in Philadelphia and urged her sister Angelina to join her.

Philadelphia Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) Founded in 1690.

However, Sarah and Angelina soon found that the Quakers weren't radical enough for them. To the Quakers, working to oppose slavery meant holding prayer vigils.

The Grimké sisters wanted to take a more activist role. they, unlike their Quaker comrades, had

witnessed years of cruelty toward slaves. They were not content to simply pray.

About this time - the mid-1830s - there was an explosion of anti-slavery sentiment in the North. Among groups campaigning to end slavery, were a number of

all-women’s groups.

Lucretia Mott

Susan B. Anthony

Elizabeth Cady

Stanton

Sarah and Angelina were expelled from the Quakers for being too radical but they found a home among the all-female antislavery groups.

They joined with abolitionist and feminist leaders of the day to found the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society.

While most of their colleagues were opposed to slavery on religious or philosophical grounds...

Sarah and Angelina’s firsthand experience with the horrors of slavery fired their passion and soon propelled them to positions of leadership in the anti-slavery movement.

For Sarah, Angelina, and the other radical abolitionists of their day, the goal was a complete social, political, and economic reorganization of American society.

They advocated for the immediate liberation of all humans held in bondage, the elimination of all racial divisions, an end to the genocidal wars against American Indians, and an end to women’s status as second-class citizens.

But even in the North, public opinion was deeply divided. A violent pro-slavery movement sprang up to counter the arguments of the abolitionists.

Violence and strong social condemnation was aimed at women who had overstepped social norms to work

actively and publically to oppose slavery.

Following a violent pro-slavery riot in Boston, Angelina wrote a passionate letter to William Lloyd Garrison, one of America’s leading abolitionists and the publisher of The Liberator, an anti-slavery newspaper.

“The ground upon which you stand is holy ground; never, never surrender it! If you surrender it, the hope of the slave is extinguished... ...this is a cause worth dying for.”~ Angelina Grimké

Garrison was so impressed and moved by Angelina’s letter that he published it as a tract, or pamphlet, the leading “social media” of the day.

Millions of copies were printed and widely distributed suddenly catapulting Angeline to a role of national prominence.

In 1836, Angelina wrote Appeal to the Christian Women of the South.

She wrote as one Southern lady to another addressing her words to Southern women in their own language. She took on every argument advanced in favor of slavery and refuted them all.

“My friends, it is a fact that the South has incorporated slavery into her religion;

that is the most fearful thing in this rebellion. They are

fighting, verily believing that they are doing God service.”

“I know you do not make the laws, but I also know that

you are the wives and mothers, the sisters, and

daughters, of those who do.”

Sarah, not to be outdone by her little sister, wrote her own book, An Epistle to the Clergy of the Southern States.

“I know nothing of men’s rights and women's rights; I recognize no rights but human rights -- for in Christ Jesus there is neither male nor female. It is my solemn conviction that, until this principal of equality is recognized and embodied in practice, the church can do nothing effectual for the permanent reformation of the world.” ~Sarah Grimké

In 1839, Sarah published her second book, Letters on the Equality of the Sexes and the Condition of Women.

Following the publication of their books, Sarah and Angelina received many speaking invitations. They went on a nation-wide

tour to 37 cities and delivered nearly 70 lectures in parlours, churches, and town halls - including a series of six lectures at Boston’s huge Odeon theatre every one attended by sold-out

crowds.

Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society 1851 American Anti-Slavery Society 1840s

During 1837, the sisters spoke to over 40,000 men and women across New England.

In Charleston, South Carolina, the Grimké’s hometown, their books and pamphlets were publicly burned.

Any post office rumoured to have received a shipment of their pamphlets would be vandalize or burned to the ground.

Their mother was threatened and harassed and was told her daughters would be arrested if they ever came to visit.

In early 1838, Angelina was invited to address the Massachusetts legislature in Boston’s State House and

on February 21, she became the first woman in U.S. history to address a legislative committee.

She began her address:“I stand before you as a Southerner exiled from the land of my birth by the sound of the lash, and the piteous cry

of the slave. I stand before you as a repentant slaveholder. I stand before you as a moral being.”

One thousand people attended both legislative sessions.

On May 17th, 1838, Sarah and Angelina addressed a mixed-race, female antislavery rally in

Philadelphia, at Pennsylvania Hall, the brand new building of the American Abolition Society.

A mob of hundreds of anti-abolitionists gathered outside and hurled rocks until all the windows were broken. Fearing for their lives, Sarah and Angelina had the attendees leave the building with their arms linked - black and white alternating.

The women got away safely, but the mob burned the building to the ground. The level of hostility was so high that the mayor of the city was afraid to call the fire department or the police.

Following this incident, in newspaper editorials and sermons, the consensus was that the women - and their

provocative behavior - were to blame for the riot!

After five years of non-stop public speaking tours, Angelina and Sarah were exhausted. They decided to

step out of the limelight, but they continued to work behind the scenes writing and publishing.

For nearly twenty years, they published the American Antislavery Society’s annual almanac,

The Slave’s Friend, and many other books, newspapers, and pamphlets.

In 1861, the Civil War broke out and in 1863, Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation freeing the slaves.

In 1863 Sarah and Angelina opened a boarding school for young ladies including African-Americas and native

Americans. Besides providing a classical education, Sarah and Angelina promoted equal rights for all women.

The school was burned down.

Once the Civil War ended, the Grimkés turned their energies toward working for women’s rights. In March 1870, in Lexington, Massachusetts, they marched with a group of 42 women through a snow storm and a crowd of angry men to cast ballots in the general election.

Because of their ages, they weren’t arrested.Sarah was 77 and Angelina 65.

Their ballots weren’t counted but they could claim to be the first women to vote in Massachusetts.

This happened exactly 50 years before womenwon the rightto vote.

Sarah Grimké passed away on December 17, 1873 at the age of 84. Her younger sister, Angelina, died

in 1879 at the age of 74. They are buried in Mt. Hope Cemetery in Boston, Massachusetts.

Mt. Hope Cemetery -- the final resting place of many prominent abolitionists, both black and white,

leaders in the struggle for women’s rights, and many prominent writers, musicians, and artists of

the pre- and post-civil war era -- is listed in the National Register of Historic Places.

Death was not the final chapter in the amazing lives of Sarah and Angelina Grimké. After the Civil War, they found out that their late brother, Henry Grimké, had had two children with his slave, Nancy Weston. Sarah and Angelina arranged for Nancy and her sons, Francis and Archibald, to come to Boston.

Nancy Weston

With the support of his aunts, Sarah and Angelina, Archibald received a BA and MA from Lincoln University, in Pennsylvania, in 1872. He received his law degree from Harvard University in 1874.

He was a newspaper editor, author, life-long activist for civil rights, and career diplomat for the US government.

In 1913, he founded the NAACP, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and served as its leader until his death in 1925.

Archibald and his wife, Sarah Stanley, had one daughter. They named her Angelina after her famous great-aunt, and Weld, after the famous abolitionist, Theodore Weld.

Angelina, taking after her parents and her great-aunts, became a civil rights activist, journalist, and writer.

She was a leader in the Harlem Renaissance and the first African-American woman to have a play produced. 1880-1958

A year younger than brother, Archibald, Francis Grimké also received a BA and MA from Lincoln University, in Pennsylvania, in 1872. He went on to graduate from Princeton Theological Seminary in 1875.

He was a fiery orator and life-long activist for civil rights. In 1878, he married Charlotte Forten, also a renowned civil rights activist.

He founded and led the Fifteenth Street Presbyterian Church in Washington, DC, which is still going strong today.

Francis died in 1937.

And today... two Grimkés who proudly trace their roots to the radical abolitionists Sarah and Angelina...

Sarah Grimké AucoinDirector of New York City

Parks Urban Park Rangers.Sarah works to preserve

endangered birds and trees.Ms. Aucoin has a BA from the University of California and an

MS from the University of Louisiana.

William Grimké DraytonMr. Drayton lives in England

where he is a teacher, poet, and campaigner for racial equality.

He founded ComeToTheTable.org

which works to unite and reconcile descendants of slaves

and slave owners.

The End