Invention of Wings by Sue Monk Kidd (1)

SOME ADDITIONAL MATERIAL FOR INVENTION OF WINGS

Sarah Moore Grimke Dictionary of American Biography, 1936 Born: November 26, 1792 in Charleston, South Carolina, United States Died: December 23, 1873 in Hyde Park, Massachusetts, United States Other Names: Grimké, Sarah Nationality: American Occupation: Feminist Grimké, Sarah Moore (Nov. 26, 1792 ­ Dec. 23, 1873), anti-­slavery crusaders and advocates of woman's rights, and her sister, Angelina Emily (Feb. 20, 1805 ­Oct. 26, 1879), were born in Charleston, S. C. Their parents, Judge John Faucheraud Grimké [q.v.] and Mary Smith Grimké, were wealthy, aristocratic, and conservative; but Sarah and Angelina early showed signs of dissatisfaction with their environment. Neither social gaiety nor the formalism of the Episcopal Church met their needs; and their tender, reflective natures made them question the institution of slavery. Sarah, the elder sister, greatly influenced Angelina in this revolt, though at the age of thirty Angelina was in advance of her more conservative sister. As a girl Sarah regretted the fact that her sex made it impossible for her to study the law. Contact with her father and her older brother, Thomas [q.v.], sharpened her mind and deepened her conscience. But it was her association with Quakers, met on a trip to Philadelphia when she was twenty­-seven, that crystallized her discontent with her home. After many trying spiritual experiences, she returned North and became a Friend. Angelina, having experimented with Presbyterianism, followed her sister. Both, however, chafed under the discipline of the orthodox Philadelphia Friends, and Angelina, the more expansive and self­-reliant, came especially to resent in them what seemed to her an equivocal attitude on slavery and Abolition. A life of modesty, economy, and charity seemed hollow when she longed for an opportunity to serve humanity. Nor did Sarah find peace; her sensitiveness and lack of self-­confidence made her life among the Quakers one of almost intolerable conflict and suffering. In 1835 Angelina, after much reflection, determined to express her growing sympathy with Abolition and wrote to Garrison, encouraging him in his work. The letter, to her surprise, was published in the Liberator (Sept. 19, 1835). Although Sarah and the Philadelphia Friends disapproved, Angelina, having turned the corner, could not go back. Eager to make a more positive contribution to the cause increasingly close to her heart, she wrote an Appeal to the Christian Women of the South (1836). In this thirty­six­ page pamphlet she urged Southern women to speak and act against slavery, which she endeavored to prove contrary not only to the first charter of human rights given to Adam, but opposed to the Declaration of Independence. “The women of the South can overthrow this horrible system of oppression and cruelty, licentiousness and wrong,” she wrote, urging them to use moral suasion in the cause of humanity and freedom. Anti­-slavery agitators eagerly seized this eloquent and forceful appeal, enhanced in value by the fact that it came from the pen of one who knew the slave system intimately. In South Carolina, on the other hand, copies of the Appeal were publicly burned by postmasters, and its author was officially threatened with imprisonment if she returned to her native city. After pondering for months, this shy, blue-­eyed young woman, courteous and gentle in bearing, took what seemed to her a momentous step. She decided to accept an invitation from the American Antislavery Society to address small groups of women in private parlors. After an inward struggle Sarah also determined to risk the disapprobation of the Friends, and henceforth the sisters were on intimate terms with Abolitionists and aided former slaves. Sarah, on her part, wrote an Epistle to the Clergy of the Southern States (1836). Two years later Angelina, in her Letters to Catherine E. Beecher in Reply to an Essay on Slavery and Abolitionism Addressed to A. E. Grimké (1838), denounced gradualism. It was at this time that the sisters persuaded their mother to apportion slaves to them as their share of the family estate, and these slaves they at once freed. From addressing small groups of women it was a natural step to the lecture platform. At first the sisters, timid and self-­conscious, spoke only to audiences of women, but as their reputation for earnestness and eloquence grew, it was impossible to keep men away. Their lectures in New England aroused great enthusiasm. The prejudice against the appearance of women on the lecture platform found many expressions; one was the famous “Pastoral Letter” issued by the General Association of Congregational Ministers of Massachusetts, a tirade against women ­preachers and women ­reformers (Liberator, Aug. 11, 1837). Whittier, though he defended “Carolina's high ­souled daughters,” at the same time urged them to confine their arguments to immediate emancipation (John Albree, ed., Whittier Correspondence, 1911, p. 265). So great was the opposition to their speaking in public that the sisters felt compelled to defend woman's rights as well as Abolition, for in their minds the two causes were vitally connected. Not only the efforts made to suppress their testimony against slavery, but their belief that slavery weighed especially heavily on both the colored and white women of the South, led them openly to champion the cause of their sex. Sarah's Letters on the Equality of the Sexes and the Condition of Woman (1838) maintained that “the page of history teems with woman's wrongs” and that “it is wet with woman's tears.” She indicted the unrighteous dominion exercised over women in the name of protection; she entreated women to “arise in all the majesty of moral power . . . and plant themselves, side by side, on the platform of human rights, with man, to whom they were designed to be companions, equals and helpers in every good word and work” (p. 45). Angelina, in her Appeal to the Women of the Nominally Free States (1837), strongly insisted on women's equal responsibilities for the nation's guilt and shame and on their interest in the public weal. Gradually many of the opponents of slavery were won over to the cause of woman's rights, and the introduction of the question into the anti-­slavery agitation by the Grimkés was an important factor in the development of both causes. On May 14, 1838, Angelina married the Abolitionist, Theodore Dwight Weld. They had one child, Charles Stuart. Since she suffered from ill health after marriage, which made the strain of public lectures seem unwise, she and her sister aided Mr. Weld in conducting a liberal school at Belleville, N. J. Later the family removed to Hyde Park, Mass., where both the sisters died. The latter part of their lives was marked by devotion to their work of teaching and by an indomitable interest in the causes to which both had contributed. Further Readings [Catherine H. Birney, The Grimké Sisters: Sarah and Angelina Grimké (1885); Theo. D. Weld, In Memory: Angelina Grimké; Weld (1880), containing sketch of Sarah Moore Grimké; S. C. Hist. and General. Mag., Jan. 1906; E. C. Stanton and others, Hist. of Woman Suffrage, vol. I (1881); F. J. and W. P. Garrison, Wm. Lloyd Garrison, 1805–1879: The Story of His Life Told by His Children (1885­89); Woman's Jour., Jan. 3, 1874, Nov. 1, 1879; Boston Transcript, Oct. 28, 1879; Garrison MSS. in the Boston Public Library.]
Source Citation "Sarah Moore Grimke." Dictionary of American Biography. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1936. Biography in Context. Web. 6 Dec. 2015. URL http://ic.galegroup.com/ic/bic1/BiographiesDetailsPage/BiographiesDetailsWindow ? failOverType=&query=&prodId=BIC1&windowstate=normal&contentModules=&disp layquery=&mode=view&displayGroupName=Biographies&limiter=&currPage=&disable Highlighting=false&displayGroups=&sortBy=&search_within_results=&p=BIC1&acti on=e&catId=&activityType=&scanId=&documentId=GALE%7CBT2310012287&sou rce=Bookmark&u=plan_smcol&jsid=2e6c6e0cbea40eebb8e69fb9397efcda Gale Document Number: GALE|BT2310012287

Sarah Moore and Angelina Emily Grimké

Sarah Moore and Angelina Emily Grimké Encyclopedia of World Biography, December 12, 1998 Born: November 26, 1792 in Charleston, South Carolina, United States Died: December 23, 1873 in Hyde Park, Massachusetts, United States Other Names: Grimké, Sarah Nationality: American Occupation: Feminist Sarah Moore (1792­-1873) and Angelina Emily (1805-­1879) Grimké were antislavery leaders and early agitators for woman's rights. Sarah Grimké was born on Nov. 29, 1792, and Angelina Grimké was born on Feb. 20, 1805; their father was a distinguished South Carolina jurist. Partly through the influence of their older brother Thomas, who was prominent in temperance and pacifist reforms, and partly from their own religious beliefs, the sisters early opposed slavery, although the family owned several slaves. On a trip to Philadelphia in 1819 Sarah was converted to Quakerism and later so was Angelina Grimké. They settled in Philadelphia in the 1820s. The Quakers' passivity failed to satisfy energetic Angelina. After reading William Lloyd Garrison's abolitionist newspaper, the Liberator , she wrote to him and then wrote a pamphlet, which the abolitionist press eagerly published. Her An Appeal to the Christian Women of the South (1836) urged her Southern sisters to "overthrow this horrible system of oppression and cruelty, licentiousness and wrong." That this was written by a Southern woman made it unusually valuable to the antislavery cause and aroused such disapproval in South Carolina that authorities threatened to prosecute Angelina if she returned. Sarah Grimké, shyer than her sister, wrote An Epistle to the Clergy of the Southern States (1836), urging churches to oppose slavery on religious grounds. The sisters freed the slaves they had inherited and offered their services to the Northern abolitionists. "As I left my native state," wrote Angelina, "to escape the sound of the driver's lash and the shrieks of tortured victims, I would gladly bury in oblivion the recollections of those scenes. But it may not, it cannot be." The Grimké sisters were highly effective in speaking to and organizing women. The American Antislavery Society appointed them lecturers (after much discussion of the propriety of sponsoring women to speak in public), and in 1836-­1837 "Carolina's high-­souled daughters," as John Greenleaf Whittier named them, toured New York and New England. The prevailing prejudice against women appearing publicly before "promiscuous assemblies," however, led to many objections and brought up the question of women's rights. Sarah's Letters on the Equality of the Sexes (1838) and Angelina's Appeal to the Women of the Nominally Free States (1837) firmly linked the rights of slaves to the rights of women and helped introduce the divisive "woman question" into the abolitionist movement. Garrison urged them to continue speaking. But Theodore Weld counseled Angelina not to "push your women's rights until human rights have gone ahead." After Weld and Angelina Grimké were married on May 14, 1838 (they had one son, Charles Stuart), the sisters spent most of their time assisting Weld with his writing and his political work in Washington. When Weld, in poor health, retired from the abolitionist movement in 1843, Sarah accompanied the couple to New York and later helped conduct Weld's interracial school in New Jersey. Sarah died on Dec. 23, 1873, and Angelina on Oct. 26, 1879. Further Readings Catherine H. Birney, The Grimké Sisters: Sarah and Angelina Grimké, the First American Advocates of Abolition and Women's Rights (1885), adulatory and old­-fashioned, is still useful. The best modern study is Gerda Lerner, The Grimké Sisters from South Carolina: Rebels against Slavery (1967). Gilbert H. Barnes and Dwight L. Dumond, eds., The Letters of Theodore Dwight Weld, Angelina Grimké and Sarah Grimké (2 vols., 1934), remains the major source of biographical information. Full Text: COPYRIGHT 2015 Gale, Cengage Learning. Source Citation "Sarah Moore and Angelina Emily Grimké.
" Encyclopedia of World Biography. Detroit: Gale, 1998. Biography in Context. Web. 6 Dec. 2015. URL http://ic.galegroup.com/ic/bic1/BiographiesDetailsPage/BiographiesDetailsWindow ? failOverType=&query=&prodId=BIC1&windowstate=normal&contentModules=&disp layquery=&mode=view&displayGroupName=Biographies&limiter=&currPage=&disable Highlighting=false&displayGroups=&sortBy=&search_within_results=&p=BIC1&acti on=e&catId=&activityType=&scanId=&documentId=GALE%7CK1631002710&sour ce=Bookmark&u=plan_smcol&jsid=12716afe736ef9d053c1b95fbf8242a9 Gale Document Number: GALE|K1631002710