[On August 2nd,
this AmericanStudier’s amazing younger sister
celebrates her birthday. So this week in her honor I’ll AmericanStudy
interesting American siblings!]
On the two
sisters who exemplified the courage and power of American abolitionism.
As I’ve
argued before in this space, it might seem from our 21st
century perspective as if it were relatively easy or at least didn’t take a
great deal of courage to be an abolitionist in mid-19th century
America, but that perception would be entirely wrong. William
Lloyd Garrison being dragged through the streets of Boston is only
the most overt of many similar examples of just how unpopular and even hated
abolitionists and abolitionism were by many Americans (from every region). Yet even
within a community defined by its courage and impressiveness, certain
individuals and voices can still stand out, can truly exemplify the kinds of
impassioned and heroic activism that represent the best of what Americans can
be and do. And within the abolitionist community, two such individuals were the Grimké
sisters, Angelina and Sarah.
Virtually
every detail and stage of the sisters’ lives defines their courage. Born to a
prominent Charleston, South Carolina judge and his wife, part of an established
and comfortable Southern family—and thus by definition in the period a
slaveholding family—both sisters by their mid-20s had come to see the
institution of slavery as a moral and national disgrace, and both chose
self-exile (first to Philadelphia and then to many other Northern cities) from
their family and home. Told repeatedly that women could and should not speak in
public, particularly not to “promiscuous” (mixed-gender) audiences, the sisters
gave shared speaking engagements throughout the north nonetheless; Sarah also
wrote a series of “Letters
on the Equality of the Sexes” to protest such gender biases. Notified that
she could never return to Charleston or risk imprisonment and arrest, Angelina
wrote an Appeal to the Christian Women of the South to make her case in that way. When she
learned that educator and abolitionist Catherine Beecher supported colonization
for freed slaves and other American blacks, Angelina wrote Letters
to Catherine Beecher, calling out the colonization idea as just
another kind of racism. And this all before they had lived in the North for ten
years!
Perhaps a
single 1838 event best sums up the sisters’ courageous activism; I’ll quote the
above-linked Gilder Lehrman Institute article on it: “Two days after their wedding,
Angelina and Theodore [Weld] attended the anti-slavery convention in
Philadelphia. Feelings ran high in the city as rumors spread of whites and
blacks parading arm in arm down city streets, and by the first evening of the
event, a hostile crowd had gathered outside the convention hall. Sounds of
objects being thrown against the walls reverberated inside. But Angelina Grimke
rose to speak out against slavery. ‘I have seen it! I have seen it!’ she told
her audience. ‘I know it has horrors that can never be described.’ Stones hit
the windows, but Angelina continued. For an hour more, she held the audience’s
rapt attention for the last public speech she would give. The next morning, an
angry mob again surrounded the hall, and that evening, set fire to the
building, ransacked the anti-slavery offices inside, and destroyed all records
and books that were found.” The sisters and Weld, like Garrison and many other
abolitionists, continued their efforts for many decades—but an individual
moment like this can make clear both the forces against which they strove and
their determination to share their voices and arguments nonetheless.
Next siblings
tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What do you
think? Sibling stories you’d highlight?
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