Angelina Grimké

''I have not placed reading before praying because I regard it more important, but because, in order to pray aright, we must understand what we are praying for.''
Angelina Grimké (1805-1879), U.S. abolitionist, feminist. repr. In The Oven Birds: American Women on Womanhood 1820-1920, ed. Gail Parker (1972). "Appeal to the Christian Women of the South," Anti-Slavery Examiner (September 1836).
''One who is a slaveholder at heart never recognizes a human being in a slave.''
Angelina Grimké (1805-1879), U.S. abolitionist. As quoted in American Slavery As It Is, by Theodore D. Weld (1839). Said on April 6, 1839. The daughters of a South Carolina slaveholding family, Angelina and her sister Sarah had moved north to escape the presence of the slave system and become active abolitionists.
''Women ought to feel a peculiar sympathy in the colored man's wrong, for, like him, she has been accused of mental inferiority, and denied the privileges of a liberal education.''
Angelina Grimké (1805-1879), U.S. abolitionist and feminist. As quoted in The Grimke Sisters from South Carolina, ch. 10, by Gerda Lerner (1967). From a paper prepared for a May 1837 antislavery convention of women. Grimke, the daughter of a South Carolina slaveowner, had severed relations with her family and moved North.
''Can you not see that women could do and would do a hundred times more for the slave, if she were not fettered?''
Angelina Grimké (1805-1879), U.S. abolitionist and feminist. As quoted in The Grimke Sisters from South Carolina, ch. 12, by Gerda Lerner (1967). Said in 1837.
''We Abolition Women are turning the world upside down.''
Angelina Grimké (1805-1879), U.S. abolitionist and feminist. As quoted in The Grimke Sisters from South Carolina, ch. 1, by Gerda Lerner (1967). Said on February 25, 1838.
''The nation is in a death-struggle. It must either become one vast slaveocracy of petty tyrants, or wholly the land of the free.''
Angelina Grimké (1805-1879), U.S. abolitionist and feminist. As quoted in The Grimke Sisters from South Carolina, ch. 19, by Gerda Lerner (1967). From a paper read on May 14, 1863, at the final session of a convention of Northern women which was held to discuss how women might aid the Union effort.
''Thou art blind to the danger of marrying a woman who feels and acts out the principle of equal rights.''
Angelina Grimké (1805-1879), U.S. abolitionist, feminist. letter, Feb. 1838, to abolitionist Theodore Dwight Weld. Letters of Theodore Dwight Weld, Angelina Grimké Weld, and Sarah Grimké, 1822-1844, vol. 2, eds. Gilbert H. Barnes and Dwight L. Dumond (1934).
''Our fathers waged a bloody conflict with England, because they were taxed without being represented. This is just what unmarried women of property are now.''
Angelina Grimké (1805-1879), U.S. abolitionist and feminist. Letters to Catherine Beecher, letter #11 (1837). In a letter dated August 28, 1837, pointing out that because women were not permitted to vote, the single woman property- owner, with not even an indirect say (through possible influence on a husband's vote) in property tax policy, had no say at all.
''I recognize no rights but human rights—I know nothing of men's rights and women's rights ...''
Angelina Grimké (1805-1879), U.S. abolitionist, suffragist, feminist, and author. Letters to Catherine E. Beecher, Letter no. 12 (1838). From a letter dated October 2, 1837. Beecher, a prominent educator of women, was an anti-suffragist.

El Beso

Twilight—and you
Quiet—the stars;
Snare of the shine of your teeth,
Your provocative laughter,
The gloom of your hair;
Lure of you, eye and lip;
Yearning, yearning,
Languor, surrender;
Your mouth,
And madness, madness,
Tremulous, breathless, flaming,
The space of a sigh;
Then awakening—remembrance,
Pain, regret—your sobbing;
And again, quiet—the stars,
Twilight—and you.

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Angelina Grimké

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El Beso

El Beso