Angelina Grimké

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Angelina Emily Grimké (1805–1879) was an American abolitionist and suffragist. Angelina was born in Charleston, South Carolina, to an aristocratic Episcopalian judge who owned slaves. She was very close to her sister Sarah Moore Grimké.

Despite the influence of their father, both sisters became abolitionists and joined the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) in Philadelphia. [Actualy, John Faucheraud Grimke, the sisters' father, actually held abolitionist views as early as 1785 and prehaps earlier. He was a friend of John Laurens (d.1782) who was an opponent of slavery). Judge Grimke held that slavery should be abolished in a grand jury charge c. 1783, but he realized that the politics of the era would not allow slavery’s abolition in South Carolina]. Additionally, it should also be noted that Sarah Grimke owned slaves herself. In 1835, Angelina wrote an anti-slavery letter to Abolitionist leader William Lloyd Garrison, who published it in The Liberator. When her anti-slavery "An Appeal to the Christian Women of the South" was published in 1836, it was publicly burned in South Carolina, and she and her sister were threatened with arrest if they ever returned to their native state. At this point, Angelina and Sarah began to speak out against slavery in public. They were among the first women in the United States to break out of their designated private spheres; this made them somewhat of a curiosity. Angelina was invited to be the first woman to speak at the Massachusetts State Legislature in 1837.

In 1838, the Grimké sisters gave a series of well-attended lectures in Boston. The same year, Angelina married the famous abolitionist and suffragist Theodore Weld. Although she had hoped to continue her work for the abolitionist cause, Angelina eventually gave up public speaking to fulfill her duties as a wife and mother. Sarah moved in with her and also retired from public life. Still, both sisters remained privately active as abolitionists and suffragists and also came to operate a boarding school. There they taught the children of several noted abolitionists, including Elizabeth Cady Stanton. They were even responsible for the advanced education of the three black sons of Henry Grimke (1801-1852), who was their brother. The sisters paid for Archibald Henry Grimke and Rev. Francis Grimke to attend Harvard. Archibald became a lawyer and later an ambassador to Haiti and Francis became a Presbyterian minister.