Two Desegregated Hearts

TWO DESEGREGATED HEARTS By Carol Murphy* To be born into an aristocratic family of Charleston, South Carolina, cushioned by wealth and waited on by slaves, hardly seems a likely background for two abolitionists who lived most of their lives in Quaker-like simplicity. Those Southern women of today, like Sarah Patton Boyle of Virginia, and Lillian Smith of Georgia, who have transcended the traditions they grew up in, have worthy predecessors in the two sisters, Sarah and Angelina Grimké, daughters of John Fauchereau Grimké, colonel in the Revolutionary War and judge of the South Carolina Supreme Court. The pilgrimage of these women from slaveholding to work for antislavery, and their relationship to the Society of Friends, is still of interest today, as we watch the death throes of racial injustice. Most of what we know of these sisters derives from a biography written by their friend of some years' standing, Catherine H. Birney, in 1885. Sarah Moore Grimké, born in 1792, the sixth of fourteen children , doubtless derived some of her tenderness of conscience from the stern religiosity of her father, who could not approve the selfish indulgence and extravagance to which the comforts of their wealth would normally lead. Sarah was a bright child and, like many intellectual girls, was close to her father, as she also was to her brilliant older brother Thomas. Though her father had no unorthodox views of slavery, he made his daughter learn to weave, to shell corn, even to pick cotton in the field. Sarah believed that this experience helped to give her "my life-long detestation of slavery, as it brought me in close contact with these unpaid toilers." She wept bitterly when a slave was punished , and even dared to break the law by surreptitiously teaching her waiting-maid to read. * Carol Murphy of Swarthmore, Pennsylvania, has written several Pendle Hill Pamphlets. She is an editor of Approach and has contributed articles to the Journal of Religious Thought and the Journal of Pastoral Care, 87 88Quaker History In 1805 the parents' last child, Angelina Emily Grimké, was born. The twelve-year-old Sarah, lonely after the departure of her beloved brother to college, made the baby her special pet, and even demanded to stand godmother for her. It was the beginning of a mother-and-daughter-like relationship which meant a lifelong closeness. Naturally Sarah greatly influenced the younger girl's character and beliefs. Neither daughter felt congenial with her mother, who appears in their accounts as too overburdened to manage her household properly, and too narrowminded to understand her daughters' views. In her 'teens, Sarah fell into a protracted religious crisis, marked by a despair of salvation and dissatisfaction with her inherited Episcopalian faith. Of Quakers she knew little; once she exclaimed: "Anything but a Quaker or a Catholic!" Though she accompanied her father on a visit to Philadelphia, she had only passing contact there with Friends. Her father's worsening illness and death took all her energies while in the North; but on her return to Charleston, she met a party of Quakers on the ship, who gave her a copy of Woolman's works. A correspondence developed with one of these Friends, Israel Morris, and after some months she was convinced. However, her conscientiousness continued to bedevil her, now in the guise of fear of speaking in meeting and even greater fear of disobedience to the call to speak. This was a problem that pursued her throughout her connection with Friends. If she did bring herself to speak, it was either hesitantly or in such a rush that some Friends accused her of the sin of preparing her message beforehand. It was probably of no help that the Friends closest to her in her years in Philadelphia, Israel Morris and his sister Catherine, were admirers of Joseph John Gurney, while the weightiest elder, Jonathan Evans, was opposed to Gurney. Years later, in 1836, Sarah was openly "eldered" in meeting by Evans, and after this she determined to leave Philadelphia. It must be remembered that these times, during and after the Separation of 1827, were a spiritual ebb-tide in Quakerism. Sarah's later self-diagnosis was that "Much...