As with many women on Sunny's list of the Most Influential Women of the Millennium, Sunny has already written about the Grimke Sisters from South Carolina.

      Born of a wealthy South Carolina plantation family, Sarah and Angelina rejected the institution of slavery. In the late 1820s, Sarah and, later, Angelina, moved north to Philadelphia and embraced the Quaker religion. Yet, even in Quaker circles, anti-slavery efforts were considered radical and the idea that women should be active in a public life was completely unacceptable.

      With the death of their brother Thomas, the only member of their family to give them even a minimum level of support and so their last remaining meaningful link to their past lives in South Carolina, Sarah's attitudes and ideas changed radically. Having expected some sign of sympathy from an old friend, Israel Morris, Sarah understood when he rebuked her for expecting even a minimum level of condolence over her brother's death. Meanwhile, in her diary of February 1835, Sarah reviewed her nine-years-long struggle within the Society of Friends, the false accusations made against her, the animosity of the orthodox Elders, her self-doubts and uncertainties. For the first time she admitted to herself a change of attitude: "Now everything looks and feels different. . .. the servitude I have been in for years is no longer felt." But she was not yet ready to enter the activist sphere. When Angelina suggested that they take up the abolitionist cause, Sarah remained silent.

      On the abolitionist scene, mob violence was following abolitionists wherever they took their message. William Lloyd Garrison wrote an editorial attacking mob violence for The Liberator. Angelina penned a heartfelt response in support of Garrison, but hesitated to send it. After a few days delay, Angelina mailed the letter that was to change her life and Sarah's life forever. Without her permission, Garrison printed Angelina's private letter to him: the abolitionist believed that the letter forwarded the movement immensely, Quakers and other friends believed the letter scandalized the sisters. They were forced to choose: repudiate the letter and remain Quakers in good standing or embrace the abolitionist movement and leave their old friends. The sisters embraced the abolitionist movement and became active in abolitionist circles.

      Yet, they had troubles there too. Many male abolitionists welcomed their help because they understood that by being women, especially southern women with first hand experience of the institution of slavery, the Grimke sisters could help the cause enormously by reaching into untouched segments of society - southerners and women. From other abolitionists, they met stiff resistance for leaving the sphere that was appointed by God to women. It was not long before they understood that they would not be spared the violence perpetrated against male abolitionists because they were women. Indeed, they came to understand that their sex would be used against them as another way of attacking the anti-slavery movement. As would be the case for thousands of women to come, they became staunch feminists because they realized that if they did not first create a pubic sphere in which they, as women, could operate, they could not fight effectively against slavery.

      Motivated by religion and a desire to live a useful life, they would be among the first American women to speak in public. They wrote a number of tracts against slavery and for woman's rights. To abolitionist acclamations, Angelina became the first American woman to address a state legislature. Both sisters would remain abolitionists and woman's rights activists for the remainder of their lives with Angelina concentrating on the abolitionist movement and Sarah concentrating on the woman's rights movement.

      According to Gerda Lerner, "Seen in the light of twentieth-century feminist theory, her accomplishment is remarkable; she [Sarah Grimke] offered the best and most coherent Bible argument for woman's equality yet written by a woman; she identified and characterized the distinction between sex and gender; she took class and race into consideration; and she tied the subordination of women both to educational deprivation and sexual oppression. She identified men, individually and as a group, as having benefited from the subordination of women. Above all, she understood that women must acquire feminist consciousness by conscious effort and that they must practice asserting their rights in order to think more appropriately."

      Angelina, in several of her pamphlets and speeches, developed a strong argument for women's rights to political equality. In her insistence on women's right, even duty, to organize for political participation and to petition, she anticipated the practice and tactics women would follow for the rest of the century. In both her "Appeal to Southern Women" and in her "Letters to Catherine Beecher" she fashioned a defense of women's right to organize in the antislavery cause which connected it with the causes of white women and influenced the practice of several succeeding generations."

      Their works resonate powerfully even today. If you know a woman who is trapped in the bowels of a patriarchal version of Christianity, give her a copy of Sarah Grimke's Letters on the Equality of the Sexes. It may open her mind to interpreting the Bible in a new, woman-friendly way.

      So, for their contributions to both abolition and the woman's rights movement, Sarah Grimke and Angelina Grimke Weld both deserve to be high on anyone's list of Influential Women of the Millennium.

Reference:

      Gerda Lerner, The Grimke Sisters from South Carolina: Pioneers for Women's Rights and Abolition, Oxford University Press, 1988

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