Sarah Moore Grimké (November 26, 1792 – December 23, 1873) was an American abolitionist, widely held to be the mother of the women's suffrage movement. Born and reared in South Carolina to a prominent and wealthy planter family, she moved to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in the 1820s and became a Quaker, as did her younger sister Angelina. The sisters began to speak on the abolitionist lecture circuit, joining a tradition of women who had been speaking in public on political issues since colonial days, including Susanna Wright, Hannah Griffitts, Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Anna Dickinson. They recounted their knowledge of slavery firsthand, urged abolition, and also became activists for women's rights.
Early life
Sarah Grimké – her parents sometimes called her "Sally"– was born in South Carolina, the sixth of 14 children and the second daughter of Mary Smith and John Faucheraud Grimké. Their father was a rich planter, an attorney and judge in South Carolina, and at one point Speaker of the South Carolina House of Representatives.
Sarah's early experiences with education shaped her future as an abolitionist and feminist. Throughout her childhood, she was keenly aware of the inferiority of her education when compared to her brothers' classical one. Although her family recognized her remarkable intelligence, she was prevented from obtaining a substantive education or pursuing her dream of becoming an attorney, as these goals were considered "unwomanly." She was educated by private tutors on subjects considered appropriate for a young Southern woman of her class, including French, embroidery, painting with watercolors, and playing the harpsichord. Her father allowed Sarah to study geography, history, and mathematics from the books in his library, and to read his law books; however, he drew the line at her learning Latin.
Sarah's mother Mary was a dedicated homemaker and an active member in the community. She was a leader in Charleston's Ladies Benevolent Society. Mary was also an active Episcopalian and consequently often devoted herself to the poor and to women incarcerated in a nearby prison. Mary's beliefs were rigid; in addition, her many charitable activities kept her from developing affectionate relationships with her children.
Feeling confined in her role, Sarah developed a connection to her family's slaves to an extent that unsettled her parents. From the time she was 12 years old, Sarah spent her Sunday afternoons teaching Bible classes to the young slaves on the plantation, an experience she found frustrating. While she desperately wanted to teach them to read the Scripture for themselves, and they had a longing for such learning, her parents prohibited this, as teaching slaves to read was illegal in South Carolina. Her parents also said that literacy would only make the slaves unhappy and rebellious, making them unfit for manual labor. Teaching slaves to read had been prohibited since 1740 in South Carolina.
Sarah secretly taught Hetty, her personal enslaved girl, to read and write, but when her parents discovered the young tutor at work, the vehemence of her father's response proved alarming. He was furious and nearly had the young slave girl whipped. Fear of causing trouble for the slaves themselves prevented Sarah from undertaking such a task again. Years afterward, she reflected on the incident, writing "I took an almost malicious satisfaction in teaching my little waiting maid at night, when she was supposed to be occupied in combing and brushing my locks. The light was put out, the keyhole screened, and flat on our stomachs before the fire, with the spelling book under our eyes, we defied the laws of South Carolina."
Sarah's brother Thomas went to Yale Law School in 1805. During his visits home, Thomas continued teaching Sarah new ideas about the dangers of Enlightenment and the importance of religion. (Thomas died young, and was described in an obituary as most proud of his piety.) These ideas, combined with her secret studies of the law, gave her some of the basis for her later work as an activist. Her father told her that if she had been a man, she would have been the greatest lawyer in South Carolina. Lerner gives a somewhat different version, in which her father said "she would have made the greatest jurist in the country." Sarah believed her inability to get higher education was unfair. She wondered at the behavior of her family and neighbors, who encouraged slaves to be baptized and to attend worship services, but did not consider them true brothers and sisters in faith.