Angelina Grimké Weld
| Angelina Emily Grimké | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born |
February 20, 1805 Charleston, South Carolina, USA |
| Died | October 26, 1879 (aged 74) Hyde Park, Massachusetts, US |
| Occupation | Politician, abolitionist, suffragist |
| Spouse(s) | Theodore Dwight Weld |
Angelina Emily Grimké Weld (February 20, 1805 – October 26, 1879) was an American political activist, women's rights advocate, supporter of the women's suffrage movement, and besides her sister, Sarah Moore Grimké, the only known white Southern woman to be a part of the abolition movement. While she was raised a Southerner, she spent her entire adult life living in the North. The time of her greatest fame was between 1836, when a letter she sent to William Lloyd Garrison was published in his anti-slavery newspaper, The Liberator, and May 1838, when she gave a courageous and brilliant speech to abolitionists gathered in Philadelphia, with a hostile crowd throwing stones and shouting outside the hall. The essays and speeches she produced in that two-year period were incisive arguments to end slavery and to advance women's rights.
Drawing her views from natural rights theory (as set forth in the Declaration of Independence), the Constitution, Christian beliefs in the Bible, and her own experience of slavery and racism in the South, Grimké argued for the injustice of denying freedom to any man or woman. She was particularly eloquent on the problem of racial prejudice. When challenged for speaking in public to mixed audiences of men and women in 1837, she and her sister Sarah Moore Grimké fiercely defended women's right to make speeches and participate in political action.
In May 1838, Grimké married Theodore Weld, a prominent abolitionist. They lived in New Jersey with her sister Sarah Moore Grimké, and raised three children. They earned a living by running two schools, the latter located in the Raritan Bay Union utopian community. After the Civil War ended, the Grimké–Weld household moved to Hyde Park, Massachusetts, where they spent their last years. Angelina and Sarah were active in the Massachusetts Woman Suffrage Association in the 1870s.
...
Wikipedia