Francis James Grimké

Francis James Grimké (October 10, 1850– October 11, 1937) was an American Presbyterian minister in Washington, DC who was prominent in working for equal rights for African Americans. He was active in the Niagara Movement and helped found the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1909.

Francis Grimké was the second of three sons born to Henry Grimké, a white (European-American) slaveholder of Charleston, South Carolina, and Nancy Weston, an enslaved woman of European and African descent. After becoming a widower, the senior Grimke began a relationship with Weston. It appeared to be a caring one; he moved with her out of the city to his plantation where they and their family would have more privacy. She was his official domestic partner in the house. Both Henry and Nancy gave Francis and his brothers -- Archibald and John—their first lessons in reading and writing.

Henry Grimké had come from a large family. Among them were two sisters, Sarah and Angelina Grimke, who had become abolitionists and moved to the North to join activists there. His other siblings continued to represent and carry out the expected roles, as he mostly did, of their prominent slaveholding family of Charleston.

Henry Grimke died in 1852. As he was dying, Henry tried to protect his second family by willing Nancy, who was pregnant with their third child, and their two sons Archibald and Francis to his son and heir Montague Grimké, by his first wife. He directed that they "be treated as members of the family."

Henry's sister Eliza, executor of his will, brought the family to Charleston and allowed them to live as if they were free, but she did not aid them financially. Nancy Weston took in laundry and did other work; when the boys were old enough, they attended a public school with free blacks. In 1860 Montague "claimed them as slaves," bringing the boys into his home as servants. Later he hired out both Archibald and Francis. During the American Civil War, Francis ran off and became a valet for a Confederate Army Officer stationed at Castle Pinckney, a jail for Union Soldiers. Francis was found and jailed for a time before being returned to Montague Grimké, who sold him to another Confederate officer. Archibald ran away and hid for two years with relatives until after the end of the Civil War. Montague never provided well for his half-brothers or for their mother.

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