Grimké sisters

The Grimké sisters, Sarah Moore Grimké (1792–1873) and Angelina Emily Grimké (1805–1879), were the first nationally-known white American female advocates of the abolition of slavery and women's rights. They were speakers, writers, and educators.

They were and remained the only Southern white women in the abolition movement. As the first American-born women to make a public speaking tour, they opened the way for women to take part in public affairs. As the first female anti-slavery agents, they early saw the connection between civil rights for African Americans and civil rights for women. Sarah Grimke's pamphlet, The Equality of the Sexes and the Condition of Women, represents the first serious discussion of woman's rights by an American woman.^: 277

They grew up in a slave-owning family in South Carolina, and in their twenties, became part of Philadelphia’s substantial Quaker society. They became deeply involved with the abolitionist movement, traveling on its lecture circuit and recounting their firsthand experiences with slavery on their family's plantation. Among the first American women to act publicly in social reform movements, they were ridiculed for their abolitionist activity. They became early activists in the women's rights movement. With Weld (see below), they eventually founded a private school.

After discovering that their late brother had had three mixed-race sons, whose mother was one of his slaves, they helped the boys get education in the North. Archibald and Francis J. Grimké stayed in the North, Francis becoming a Presbyterian minister, but their younger brother John returned to the South.