For the second time in two years, they’re coming out with a movie on Che Guevara. I don’t know why we need another film about him. I wish they’d make one about the Grimke sisters.
I hear a thunder of voices shouting, "WHO?!"
Only two of the greatest people who ever lived.
Born in South Carolina at the dawn of the 19th century, Angelina and Sarah Grimke lived lives of almost superhuman courage.
Consider their world: slavery had always existed, and no doubt always would. It drove the economy and was as taken for granted as electricity in our time. Every institution supported slavery. The Supreme Court would soon rule that, “The black man is so inferior to the white that he has no rights which the white man is bound to respect.”
As far as women went, we did not have the right to own property. (Upon marriage everything belonged to our husband. If we should be so brazen as to leave an abusive marriage, we walked out with only the clothes on our backs.* We didn’t even have the right to custody of our children.) Because of our well-known “mental inferiority,” we were not considered competent to testify in court and most schools and professions were forbidden.
It's easy to believe something when every one else knows what you say is true.
From earliest childhood Sarah and Angelina saw that slavery was wrong and they spoke out: “How can we call ourselves Christians while supporting this terrible evil? Why don’t we free our slaves? Why doesn't the minister preach against slavery?”
The result: most family members stopped speaking to them. They were forced to leave their church. The minister told their mother that they were mentally ill and should be institutionalized.
Eventually the sisters moved up north and became active in the tiny American Anti-slavery Movement. But even there the notion of black equality terrified whites. After a series of riots in which mobs first attacked abolitionists then moved on to any black people they could find, the Movement began to wonder, "Maybe we're just causing more trouble for the colored population. Given the degree of oppositon, perhaps it's all hopeless anyway."
But Angelina wrote abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison, “The ground upon which you stand is holy ground. Never, never give up!” Reprinted around the country, her words created a sensation, both positive and negative. Suddenly Angelina was famous, and she and Sarah were invited on a speaking tour of Massechusets.
“I appeal to you, my friends, as mothers: are you willing to enslave your children? You stare back with horror and indignation at such questions. But why, if slavery is not wrong to those upon whom it is imposed?” Angelina Grimke
Because of Biblical admonitions, people were scandalized to see women speak in public. The Grimkes were attacked physically and verbally, venues were denied them--even the speaking hall was burned down. Newspapers said the sisters spoke only because no white man would marry them, and they hoped to get black husbands if the laws were changed.
“What is a mob? What would the breaking of every window be? What would the leveling of this Hall be? Any evidence that we are wrong, or that slavery is a good and wholesome institution?” Sarah Grimke
Soon after Sarah wrote a series of letters on the need for women’s equality, which inspired Lucretia Mott and others to begin the Women’s Rights Movement.
“I ask no favors for my sex... All I ask of our brethren is that they take their feet from off our necks.”
Angelina had a long and happy marriage in which she kept the right to her own property. Sarah lived with them. They were alive in 1865 when slavery was abolished. And in the 1870’s, defying the law, Sarah and Angelina voted.
*I stole this line from Elisabeth Griffith, in Ken Burns’s Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton.
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