Arm in Arm: The Grimké Sisters' Fight for Abolition and Women's Rights

Sisters Sarah and Angelina Grimké were born around 1800 to a wealthy family in Charleston, South Carolina. Their father made his money through the unpaid labor of three hundred men, women, and children enslaved on his plantations and in his homes. Of eleven Grimké children, only Sarah and Angelina took against slavery. As young adults, they moved to Philadelphia and became Quakers. Then they became abolitionists, and next they became some of the first women ever to speak in public in the United States. When critics said that women had no right to speak in public, or to offer opinions about slavery or politics, Sarah and Angelina took up the cause of women’s rights.
After Angelina married abolitionist Theodore Weld, the sisters retired from speaking and began writing and teaching, still working to achieve equal rights for all. After the Civil War they learned that their brother Henry had fathered three sons with his enslaved mistress. They welcomed these mixed-race young men into their close family circle. The nephews and a great-niece continued the sisters’ work, in new ways, into the twentieth century.

Publication date September 2025

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