Despite retiring from public life, the Grimké sisters continued to promote religious, educational, economic, and political equality for African Americans and women. However, the nature and intensity of their participation in the antislavery and women’s rights movements had dramatically changed after 1838. Consequently, neither Angelina, who was in ill health, nor Sarah occupied roles of active leadership within the movements. In May of 1838, Angelina married Theodore Weld, a radical abolitionist who was an ardent admirer of the Grimké sisters’ antislavery work. Together, the Welds, with Sarah Grimké’s assistance, penned a powerful antislavery pamphlet in which they exposed the devastating horrors and barbarities of the American slavery system.
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The sisters fundamentally held to the principle that all African Americans, as moral human beings, were entitled to equal civil liberties. Thus, they adamantly avowed that social, civil, and political equality for African Americans were indisputable rights, not privileges. In her Letters to Catherine Beecher, Angelina cogently explained her enlightened understanding and beliefs regarding emancipation and African American civil rights. She stressed that emancipation should unequivocally consist of “freedom for the slave,” paid labor, adequate wages, legal rights, educational opportunities, and “the protection of equitable laws.” In Angelina Grimké’s unshakable opinion, there was no place for gradualism and conservatism in the fight for African American emancipation and civil …show more content…
In An Appeal to the Women of the Nominally Free States, Angelina specifically acknowledged the plight of the African American woman. She humbly articulated, “we are aware of the prejudice you suffer daily, but entreat you to bear with us in our folly.” Angelina then entreated her African American “sister” to be “willing to mingle with us whilst we have the prejudice, because it is only by associating with you that we shall be able to overcome it.” Additionally, the Grimké sisters and other abolitionists passionately advocated the concepts of nonresistance and nonviolence when responding to violent protestors. Remarkably, these peaceful methods of noncooperation were later championed by Martin Luther King Jr. during the African American Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. Hence, a direct correlation can be drawn between the ideological principles and non-violent practices of nineteenth-century abolitionists, and twentieth-century civil rights
The sisters fundamentally held to the principle that all African Americans, as moral human beings, were entitled to equal civil liberties. Thus, they adamantly avowed that social, civil, and political equality for African Americans were indisputable rights, not privileges. In her Letters to Catherine Beecher, Angelina cogently explained her enlightened understanding and beliefs regarding emancipation and African American civil rights. She stressed that emancipation should unequivocally consist of “freedom for the slave,” paid labor, adequate wages, legal rights, educational opportunities, and “the protection of equitable laws.” In Angelina Grimké’s unshakable opinion, there was no place for gradualism and conservatism in the fight for African American emancipation and civil …show more content…
In An Appeal to the Women of the Nominally Free States, Angelina specifically acknowledged the plight of the African American woman. She humbly articulated, “we are aware of the prejudice you suffer daily, but entreat you to bear with us in our folly.” Angelina then entreated her African American “sister” to be “willing to mingle with us whilst we have the prejudice, because it is only by associating with you that we shall be able to overcome it.” Additionally, the Grimké sisters and other abolitionists passionately advocated the concepts of nonresistance and nonviolence when responding to violent protestors. Remarkably, these peaceful methods of noncooperation were later championed by Martin Luther King Jr. during the African American Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. Hence, a direct correlation can be drawn between the ideological principles and non-violent practices of nineteenth-century abolitionists, and twentieth-century civil rights