Oh, had I received the education I desired, had I been bred to the profession of the law, I might have been a useful member of society, and instead of myself and my property being taken care of, I might have been a protector of the helpless, a pleader for the poor and unfortunate. Sarah Moore Grimké
In last week’s post we talked about Angelina Grimké Weld. The Grimké sisters were famous abolitionists in their day. Both sisters also joined efforts in women’s suffrage. They have largely been forgotten but their work has endured. Angelina was the better speaker; but Sarah was just as passionate about justice for the downtrodden. She left writings that have come to the attention of historians today because Sarah was so far ahead of her time in her thought. Today women easily get the education that Sarah could only dream about. She was very courageous to speak out for the truth.
Sarah Moore Grimké was born in Charleston, South Carolina, on November 26, 1792, the sixth child of John and Mary Grimké. Her “baby” sister Angelina was not born until 1805, making Sarah thirteen years older than this child that she would love and dote on for the rest of her life. Sarah would never marry but would see herself as a second mother to Angelina’s children.
Growing up on a Southern plantation exposed Sarah to the many horrors of slavery. This bothered her tremendously. Sarah had a brilliant mind and she longed for a good education, but women in the South were only taught frivolous things. They were just expected to marry and help their husbands run a plantation. This included letting the slaves do all of the work; women were basically just dolls on a shelf.
Sarah wanted a more responsible, fulfilling life. She wanted to study law like her brother did. Because of the restrictions placed on women’s education she knew that she was not going to be allowed to so she moved to Pennsylvania.
Sarah joined the Quakers’ Society of Friends. Their views on slavery and women’s rights were similar to her own. She remained with the Quakers’ until they expelled her when Angelina married Theodore Weld because he was not a Quaker. (See post on May 4, 2016 – Angelina Grimké Weld.)
Angelina’s letter to William Lloyd Garrison was the start of the sisters’ involvement in the abolitionist movement. Sarah was shy and Angelina was outspoken but the two began to attend abolitionist meetings together. Sarah and Angelina would become the first women to testify in front of a state legislature on the issue of slavery.
The sisters launched a speaking tour in New England after speaking at an Anti-Slavery Convention in New York in 1837. They originally intended to speak only to women but soon their audiences included men. Sarah and Angelina became the first abolitionists to speak to mixed audiences. They boldly debated with men and became the first to do away with gender restrictions in the anti-slavery movement.
After Angelina’s marriage to Theodore Weld the sisters retired from public speaking. The Weld’s and Sarah became teachers and worked in several schools that they established. In 1862 they all moved to Boston to continue their teaching careers. As the sisters grew older and began to have health problems they could not be as active in slavery or women’s issues. However, their example inspired many other women who went on to work for justice for slaves and women.
In 1868, Angelina read about a man named Grimké who was speaking on slavery. Thinking that Grimké was not a very common name Angelina contacted him. Sure enough, they discovered that their brother Henry had fathered three sons by his female slave, Nancy Weston. Those children were Archibald, John, and Francis James Grimké. When Angelina and Sarah found out about these three half-nephews, they established close relationships, and true to their principles of equality for blacks, they supported Archibald and Francis through college and graduate school.
Archibald studied law at Harvard, and Francis went to Princeton Theological Seminary. Both men went on to national leadership among the Black communities. As pastor of the 15th Street Presbyterian Church in Washington D.C., Francis Grimké and his wife Charlotte Forten Grimké were friends and colleagues of Anna Julia Cooper. Archibald was a vice-president of the NAACP and president of the American Negro Academy. Sarah and Angelina’s help had further consequences for blacks in America. Archibald Grimké fathered a daughter named Angelina Weld Grimké. This Angelina (often confused with her great aunt Angelina Grimké Weld) went on the get an education in Boston. She taught school and wrote many published essays.
Sarah Grimké died in 1873 without ever having gotten the college education that she longed for. Her legacy remains through her prominent black half-nephews and their children and through her writings.
Today woman have freedoms that we take for granted – education, jobs, the vote, and a public voice. Sarah could only dream about and write about those things.
Here are words of wisdom from Sarah Grimké. Keep in mind that these were written in the 1830’s.
From “Letters on the Equality of the Sexes, and the Condition of Woman” (1837):
- “On the Original Equality of Women”
“Had Adam tenderly reproved his wife, and endeavored to lead her to repentance instead
of sharing in her guilt, I should be much more ready to accord to man that superiority which he claims; but as the facts stand disclosed by the sacred historian, it appears to me
that to say the least, there was as much weakness exhibited by Adam as by Eve. They both fell from innocence, and consequently from happiness, but not from equality…. The consequence of the fall was an immediate struggle for dominion, and Jehovah foretold which would gain the ascendancy; but as he created them in his image, as that image manifestly was not lost by the fall, because it is urged in Genesis 9:6, as an argument why the life of man should not be taken by his fellow man, there is no reason to suppose that sin produced any distinction between them as moral, intellectual and responsible beings.” (Letter #1)
- “On the Condition of Women in the United States”
“During the early part of my life, my lot was cast among the butterflies of the fashionable 
world; and of this class of women, I am constrained to say, both from experience and observation, that their education is miserably deficient; that they are taught to regard marriage as the one thing needful, the only avenue to distinction; hence to attract the notice and win the attentions of men, by their external charms, is the chief business of fashionable girls. They seldom think that men will be allured by intellectual acquirements, because they find, that where any mental superiority exists, a woman is generally shunned and regarded as stepping out of the ‘appropriate sphere,’ which, in her view, is to dress, to dance, to set out to the best possible advantage her person, to read the novels which inundate the press, and which do more to destroy her character as a rational creature, than anything else. Fashionable women regard themselves, and are regarded by men, as pretty toys or as mere instruments of pleasure; and the vacuity of mind, the heartlessness, the frivolity which is the necessary result of the false and debasing estimate of women, can only be fully understood by those who have mingled in the folly and wickedness of fashionable life; and who have been called from such pursuits by the voice of the Lord Jesus, inviting their weary and heavy laden souls to come unto Him and learn of Him, that they may find something worthy of their immortal spirit, and their intellectual powers; that they may learn the high and holy purposes of their creation, and consecrate themselves unto the service of God; and not, as is now the case, to the pleasure of man.” (Letter #8)
Amen and amen!! We women today have much to be thankful for to women like Sarah Moore Grimké. I pray that we could all have her courage, faithfulness, and forthrightness.
