Read Part One HERE
In this post I focus on a woman named Sarah Grimke. She lived from 1792 - 1873. Sarah was born in Charleston, South Carolina, USA. She was the eigth of fourteen children and the second daughter of Mary and John Faucheraud Grimke, a wealthy plantation owner who was also an attorney and a judge. The Grimkes lived alternatively between a fashionable townhouse in Charleston and the sprawling Beaufort plantation in the country.
Like other large plantation owners, they kept scores of slaves, who did all the labour at Beaufort, from cotton picking to cooking, to caring for the children. Slaves worked as nursemaids to the Grimke's fourteen children and each child was also assigned a constant companion, a slave of about the same age. Sarah later said that at age five she saw a slave being whipped, and tried to board a steamer to a place where there was no slavery.
Sarah's early experiences with education shaped her future as an abolitionist and a feminist. Throughout her childhood, she was keenly aware of the inferiority of her own education when compared to that of her brothers. Although everyone recognised her remarkable intelligence, Sarah could not pursue her dream of becoming a lawyer and following in her father's footsteps.
Read Part Thirty-One HERE
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