Grimké, Angelina Emily

Grimké, Angelina Emily (grĭm`kē), 1805–79, American abolitionist and advocate of women's rights, b. Charleston, S.C. Converted to the Quaker faith by her elder sister Sarah Moore Grimké, she became an abolitionist in 1835, wrote An Appeal to the Christian Women of the South (1836) in testimony of her conversion, and with her sister began speaking around New York City. She developed into an orator of considerable power and was invited (1837) to lecture in Massachusetts. Her three appearances before the Massachusetts legislative committee on antislavery petitions early in 1838 constituted a triumph. The same year she married Theodore Dwight Weld, also an active abolitionist. Ill health after her marriage led her to abandon the lecture platform, but she continued to aid Weld in his abolitionist work and maintained a lasting, lively interest in the cause to which they had contributed so much.

Bibliography

See C. H. Birney, The Grimké Sisters (1885, repr. 1969); G. H. Barnes and D. L. Dumond, ed., Letters of Theodore Dwight Weld, Angelina Grimké Weld, and Sarah Grimké, 1822–1844 (2 vol., 1934); G. Lerner, The Grimké Sisters from South Carolina (1967, repr. 1971); K. D. Lumpkin, The Emancipation of Angelina Grimké (1974); M. Perry, Lift Up Thy Voice: The Grimké Family's Journey from Slaveholders to Civil Rights Leaders (2001).

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Grimké, Angelina Emily (1805–79) abolitionist, women's rights advocate; born in Charleston, S.C. (sister of Sarah Grimké). Daughter of a slave-owning judge and educated by tutors, she came to dislike the institution and practice of slavery and in 1829 she followed her older sister Sarah to Philadelphia. There she adopted the Quaker religion and turned to teaching, but she soon was devoting herself to the abolition of slavery and to promoting the rights of women. In 1836 her Appeal to the Christian Women of the South, published by the American Anti-Slavery Society, brought the name Grimké to the fore and she was warned not to return to the South. She and Sarah moved to New York City in 1836. She soon became a noted speaker against slavery, but controversial even in the North for speaking before "mixed" audiences of men and women, and soon she was drawn into the related struggle for women's rights in general. In 1838, she married the abolitionist Theodore Weld and thereafter she concentrated on circulating antislavery petitions and publishing antislavery documents. In 1840 the Welds moved to Belleville, N.J., and from 1848–62 they ran a school there. In 1863 they moved to Massachusetts, where Angelina took up teaching (1864–67). Angelina suffered a stroke after her sister Sarah's death in 1873.