Late
in the seventeen hundreds Judge John Faucheraud Grimke became a strong supporter of slavery and of
the subservience of women. He owned a huge plantation in the South Carolina
colony as well as a large number of slaves. John and Mary Grimke gave birth to
Sarah in 1792 and Angelina in 1805. Both the sisters grew up surrounded by
wealth and luxury as well as servants and slaves. After a few short years both
sisters grew to despise slavery and at the early age of five, after seeing a
slave being whipped, Sarah hated everything about slavery to the point of
trying to board a steam boat and leave her father’s plantation. After growing
up under repression as women and after living around slavery their whole youth,
Sarah and Angelina Grimke rebelled against subjugation and their hatred of
slavery grew into passions that would define the rest of their lives.
Although they were daughters of a
plantation owner, Sarah and Angelina Grimke grew to loath slavery with all its
degradations and filth. Their intimacy with slavery in their youth gave the
sisters a strong platform of experience on which to base their future books,
columns, and speeches. This gave them a weapon of sorts to realistically
portray the atrocity of slavery and convince people of its brutality.
Sarah accompanied her dying father
to Philadelphia. She stayed in Philadelphia for a few months longer after her
father’s death and meet Israel Morris, a Quaker. He introduced her to Quakerism
and after a few weeks Sarah returned home. After a short stay on her family’s
plantation Sarah decided to become a Quaker minister and went back to
Philadelphia, leaving her Episcopalian upbringing behind. Being a woman and
disrespected when it came to public speaking, her endeavors were unsuccessful
as a minister. With her younger sister in mind, Sarah returned home to “save” Angelina
from an otherwise likely life of repression and to bring Sarah with her. After
converting Angelina to Quakerism, the sisters continued to fight for women’s
rights and the abolishment of slavery.
Viewing women’s rights to be equal
in importance to abolitionism, both sisters continued to fight for their causes.
In 1836 Sarah wrote and had published Epistle to the Clergy of the Southern States
and Letters on the Equality of the Sexes and the Condition of Women in
separate newspapers which gained her large amounts of criticism from the
general public as well as fellow Quakers and abolitionists. The sisters grew famous
for breaking the social norms of the time, like speaking to mixed audiences and
debating with men. In 1838 Angelina got married to a prominent abolitionist
named Theodore Weld. After a few years
of speaking around the country the sisters retired and became less conspicuous
while taking the back stage.
From an early age the Grimke sisters
led a life of selflessness. Against the law and her parents’ wishes, Sarah taught
her personal slave how to read and write until her parents found out and threatened
to whip the slave. Once away from home, their lives revolved around ways of
fighting against slavery and for women’s rights. The sisters were notable for
their unprecedented forwardness and passion and as women they gained huge
amounts of publicity, positive as well as negative. Sarah and Angelina Grimke
are remembered as prominent members in the early abolitionist movement that led
to the eventual prohibition of slavery; and as strong advocates of women’s
rights that started a movement that would change how women were treated and
respected worldwide.
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