1792–1873, American abolitionist and advocate of women's rights, b. Charleston, S.C. She came from a distinguished Southern family. On a visit to Philadelphia, Sarah joined the Society of Friends. She converted her younger sister Angelina to the Quaker faith, and the two moved to the North permanently in Jan., 1832. Angelina became an abolitionist in 1835 and in turn converted Sarah. These two timid daughters of an aristocratic slaveholding family became the first women who dared to speak in public for the black slave and then for women's rights. Sarah wrote An Epistle to the Clergy of the Southern States (1836), urging abolition, and Letters on the Equality of the Sexes and the Condition of Woman (1838). In 1838 the sisters persuaded their mother to give them, as their share of the family estate, slaves, whom they immediately freed.

See bibliography under Grimké, Angelina Emily.

The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition Copyright© 2004, Columbia University Press. Licensed from Lernout & Hauspie Speech Products N.V. All rights reserved.

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