Overview
The American antislavery movement was electrified in the mid-1830s when an extraordinary proponent--a tall, slender woman with blazing blue eyes--appeared like a comet from the South. That a lady would make her mind known in pulic on a social issue at all was remarkable: Women were supposed to be seen and not heard. But for the daughter of slaveowners to speak out against slavery--that was truly astonishing!Her name was Angelina Grimke. A devout Christian, this rebel had fled her distinguished Charleston family in 1829 to join her Quaker sister Sarah in Philadelphia. Together the Grimke sisters traveled through New York and New England, speaking on abolition and converting curious and even hostile crowds. Sometimes in physical danger, Angelina braved the hatred of proslavery mobs, the ridicule of detractors, and the censure of many churches. Still, she was the first woman ever to address an American political body; and as she defended her right to speak, Angelina sowed the early seeds of the women's rights movement.
Based on her diaries, letters, and other primary sources, this biography follows an intense and sometimes difficult woman from childhood to her career as a reformer, her passionate courtship and marriage with abolitionist Theodore Weld, her later life of service to the cause in spite of chronic ill health.
Angelina Grimke lived at the heart of the greatest conflict of her time, and she chose to step outside the proper domain of white women to do what she believed was right. In defining a woman's right to speak her conscience against horrendous social evils, Angelina Grimke shaped as well the right of women to participate in the greater political life of the nation.