Sarah Grimké (1792 - 1873)

Mon Nov 26, 1792

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Sarah Moore Grimké, born on this day in 1792, was an American abolitionist, also widely held to be one of the mothers of the women’s suffrage movement.

Born and raised in South Carolina to a prominent, slave-owning planter family, she moved to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in the 1820s and became a Quaker. She and her sister Angelina Grimké are two of the very few white Southern women who became prominent abolitionists.

Here is an excerpt from a series of articles she wrote, titled “Letters on the Condition of Women and the Equality of the Sexes” (1838):

“I ask no favors for my sex, I surrender not our claim to equality. All I ask of our brethren is that they will take their feet from off our necks, and permit us to stand upright on the ground which God has designed us to occupy…To me, it is perfectly clear that whatsoever it is morally right for a man to do, it is morally right for a woman to do.”