Angelina Grimké

Angelina Emily Grimké Weld (February 20, 1805 – October 26, 1879) was an American abolitionist, political activist, women's rights advocate, and supporter of the women's suffrage movement. At one point she was the best known, or "most notorious," woman in the country. She and her sister Sarah Moore Grimké were considered the only notable examples of white Southern women abolitionists. The sisters lived together as adults, while Angelina was the wife of abolitionist leader Theodore Dwight Weld.

Although raised in Charleston, South Carolina, Angelina and Sarah spent their entire adult lives in the North. Angelina's greatest fame was between 1835, when William Lloyd Garrison published a letter of hers in his anti-slavery newspaper The Liberator, and May 1838, when she gave a speech to abolitionists with a hostile, noisy, stone-throwing crowd outside Pennsylvania Hall. The essays and speeches she produced in that period were incisive arguments to end slavery and to advance women's rights.

Drawing her views from natural rights theory (as set forth in the Declaration of Independence), the United States Constitution, Christian beliefs in the Bible, and her own childhood memories of the cruel slavery and racism in the South, Grimké proclaimed the injustice of denying freedom to any man or woman. When challenged for speaking in public to mixed audiences of men and women in 1837, she and her sister Sarah fiercely defended women's right to make speeches and participate in political discourse.

In May 1838, Angelina married Theodore Dwight Weld, a prominent abolitionist. They lived in New Jersey with her sister Sarah and raised three children, Charles Stuart (1839), Theodore Grimké (1841), and Sarah Grimké Weld (1844). They earned a living by running two schools, the latter located in the Raritan Bay Union utopian community. After the Civil War ended, the Grimké–Weld household moved to Hyde Park, Massachusetts, where they spent their final years. Angelina and Sarah were active in the Massachusetts Woman Suffrage Association.

Family background

Grimké was born in Charleston, South Carolina, to John Faucheraud Grimké and Mary Smith, both from wealthy planter families. Her father was an Anglican lawyer, planter, politician, and judge, a Revolutionary War veteran, and a distinguished member of Charleston society. Her mother Mary was a descendant of South Carolina Governor Thomas Smith. Her parents owned a plantation and were major slaveholders. Angelina was the youngest of 14 children. Her father believed women should be subordinate to men and provided education to only his male children, but the boys shared their studies with their sisters.

Early years and religious activity

Both Mary and John Grimké were strong advocates of the traditional, upper-class, Southern values that permeated their rank of Charleston society. Mary would not permit the girls to socialize outside the prescribed elite social circles, and John remained a slaveholder his entire life.

Nicknamed "Nina", young Angelina Grimké was very close to her older sister Sarah Moore Grimké, who, at the age of 13, persuaded her parents to allow her to be Angelina's godmother. The two sisters maintained a close relationship throughout their lives, and lived together for most of their lives, albeit with several short periods of separation.

Even as a child, Angelina was described in family letters and diaries as the most self-righteous, curious, and self-assured of all her siblings. In her biography The Grimké Sisters from South Carolina, historian Gerda Lerner writes: "It never occurred to [Angelina] that she should abide by the superior judgment of her male relatives or that anyone might consider her inferior, simply for being a girl." More so than her elder sister (and later, fellow abolitionist) Sarah, Angelina seemed to be naturally inquisitive and outspoken, a trait which often offended her traditional family and friends.

When the time came for her confirmation in the Episcopal Church at the age of 13, Angelina refused to recite the creed of faith. An inquisitive and rebellious girl, she concluded that she could not agree with it and would not complete the confirmation ceremony. Angelina converted to the Presbyterian faith in April 1826, aged 21.

Angelina was an active member of the Presbyterian church. A proponent of biblical study and interfaith education, she taught a Sabbath school class and also provided religious services to her family's slaves—a practice her mother originally frowned upon, but later participated in. Grimké became a close friend of the pastor of her church, Rev. William McDowell. McDowell was a Northerner who had previously been the pastor of a Presbyterian church in New Jersey. Grimké and McDowell were both very opposed to the institution of slavery, on the grounds that it was a morally deficient system that violated Christian law and human rights. McDowell advocated patience and prayer over direct action and argued that abolishing slavery "would create even worse evils". This position was unacceptable to the young Angelina.

In 1829, she addressed the issue of slavery at a meeting in her church and said that all members of the congregation should openly condemn the practice. Because she was such an active member of the church community, her audience was respectful when it declined her proposal. By this time the church had come to terms with slavery, finding biblical justification and urging good Christian slaveholders to exercise paternalism and improve the treatment of their slaves. But Angelina lost faith in the values of the Presbyterian church and in 1829 she was officially expelled. With her sister Sarah's support, Angelina adopted the tenets of the Quaker faith. The Quaker community was very small in Charleston, and she quickly set out to reform her friends and family. However, given her self-righteous nature, her condescending comments about others tended to offend more than persuade. After deciding that she could not fight slavery while living in the South among white slaveowners, she followed her older sister Sarah to Philadelphia. She would never see Charleston or her mother again.