The strength of Angelina:
the radicalism of faith

“We have turned America upside down”. This is not a slogan from a U.S. presidential campaign but the proud declaration of Angelina Emily Grimké, a prominent figure, alongside her sister Sarah, in the fight for the abolition of slavery and women’s rights.

Angelina, born in 1805 in Charleston, South Carolina, grew up in a wealthy family that owned dozens of slaves. It was in this familial environment that a radical opposition to slavery took root in her. However, it was in the Scriptures and in her faith—clothed (not without criticism and second thoughts) in the austere garments of Quakerism—that she found the strength of her radical stance.

Evidence of this radicalism can be found in the book Obbedisco solo a Dio [I Obey Only God] (edited by Carla Maria Gnappi, Nerbini Editions), which gathers the public and epistolary exchange that Angelina Grimké had with educator and social reformer Catharine Beecher, who was also a prominent figure in the anti-slavery and abolitionist movement. Their profound difference, however, lies in how they believed this goal should be achieved. While Catharine Beecher maintained that only gradual, “moderate” action over time could bring an end to slavery, Angelina Grimké believed that the human dignity brutally stripped from those in chains must be immediately restored, without any compromise. However, another issue distinguishes the two activists and scholars, which is the question of women’s rights. While Beecher did not intend to challenge the role of women as meek keepers of the hearth, without a public voice, for Angelina Grimké (and her sister Sarah), the abolition of slavery and the fight for women’s rights were inseparably intertwined.

Angelina would become a passionate supporter and promoter of both causes, basing her “political” action on the strength she drew from the Scriptures. If someone’s dignity is taken away, the only authority she is willing to answer to is God, because, as she repeatedly stated, rights derive from God, not from the establishment. To obey God, therefore, means to oppose injustice. Her role model was the biblical figure of Esther, the queen born a slave.

Angelina was revolutionary in every gesture. It was she who made the scandalous appeal to the Christian women of the South (An Appeal to the Christian Women of the South), urging them to take a stand against the immorality of slavery. Thus, in I Obey Only God, through numerous scholarly essays and the exchange of letters, we find the roots of an early feminism intertwined with abolitionism, and the re-evaluation of figures like Grimké who shaped history.

By Vichi De Marchi