Francesca Furchtgott                             Wednesday, November 3, 2004

            3e3

Angelina Grimke

Objective: To create a safe place for women in the public so that they can be effective abolitionists and reformers. Also, that women have certain rights and that slavery should be abolished.

Summary: My sister and I are among the first women to speak publicly against slavery. We have been abolitionists and feminists from an early age. I wrote my first tract, Appeal to the Christian Women of the South, in 1836. In it, I encourage white women in the south to join the abolitionist movement for their sake as well as the slaves’. I believe that slavery harms the institution of marriage because the men father slaves’ children.

Major Accomplishments:

1805    I was born in Charleston, South Carolina, to a slave-owning Episcopalian judge, the youngest of 14 children

1827    I was converted to the Quaker faith by my sister and godmother, Sarah

1829    I wrote a letter to William Lloyd Garrison and he published it in The Liberator. This was taken very badly by the Quaker community.

1836    I was rebuked again when I tried to discuss abolition in meeting.

I wrote my first tract, Appeal to the Christian Women of the South.

1837    My sister and I went on a tour of Congregationalist churches in the north-east to denounce slavery and race prejudice

1838    Our Boston lecture series on abolition was very popular

            I married the feminist and abolitionist Theodore Weld. We initially assumed that I would keep on speaking in public, but the demands of running a home and being a wife and mother forced me to retire. Sarah retired with me. We remained active in private though.

1839    My sister and I edited American Slavery as It Is: Testimony of a Thousand Witnesses.

            I bore three children: one in 1839, 1841 and 1844

We ran a boarding school. Many abolitionists sent their children there, including Elizabeth Cady Stanton. It eventually became a cooperative community called the Raritan Bay Union.

1870    My sister and I voted in the elections. We aren’t arrested because of our age.

1873    My sister Sarah died. I suffered several strokes which left me paralyzed for the last six years of my life.

1879    I died on October 26.

References:

William Lloyd Garrison He is a well-known abolitionist leader. He writes and                                                     speaks a lot against slavery. He is the editor of                                                                     The Liberator.

Theodore Weld                        A leader in the abolitionist movement, he is also a feminist.                                             He married Angelina Grimke in 1838.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton Well known for liberating women, she is also an                                                                        abolitionist. She is active in obtaining property rights and                                                            equal guardianship of children for women.

Addendum:

I have included an excerpt from my Letter XII Human Rights Not Founded on Sex, October 2, 1837, so that you may get a better idea of what I believe.

“[The doctrine] has robbed woman of essential rights, the right to think and speak and act on all great moral questions, just as men think and speak and act; the right to share their responsibilities, perils and toils; the right to fulfill the great end of her being, as a moral, intellectual and immortal creature, and of glorifying god in her body and her spirit which are His. Hitherto, instead of being a help meet to man, in the highest, noblest sense of the term as a companion, a co-worker, an equal; she has been a mere appendage of his being, an instrument of his convenience and pleasure, the pretty toy with which he wiled away his leisure moments, or the pet animal whom he humored into playfulness and submission. Woman, instead of being regarded as the equal of man, has uniformly been looked down upon as his inferior, a mere gift to fill up the measure of his happiness. In "the poetry of romantic gallantry," it is true, she has been called "the last best gift of God to man"; but I believe I speak forth the words of truth and soberness when I affirm, that woman never was given to man. She was created, like him, in the image of God, and crowned with glory and honor; created only a little lower than the angels, - not, as is almost universally assumed, a little lower than man; on her brow, as well as on his, was placed the "diadem of beauty," and in her hand the scepter of universal dominion.”

Bibliography:

Sunshine for Women, February 2000. <http://www.pinn.net/~sunshine/whm2000/grimke4.html>

Sylvia Edwards, Longview Community College, June 2003

<http://www.edwardsly.com/grimkes.htm>

Knowledgerush

<http://www.knowledgerush.com/kr/biography/2039/Angelina_Emily_Grimke/>

Sujal Shah, 2003

<http://www.sujal.net/cities/>

About Women’s History

<http://womenshistory.about.com/library/bio/blstanton.htm>