Tuesday, June 10, 2014

Mothers of the Movement: The Grimke Sisters !

Mothers of the Movement: The Grimke Sisters 

By Charlie Brown
                                                                 

 Sarah and Angelina Grimke were outstanding American women's rights and abolitionist activists in the 19th Century.  Talk about self-reliance, personal responsibility and children with minds of their own ! In the pit of the Slavery Institution, in Charleston , South Carolina, with a father who owned over 100 slavery, these GIRLS taught themselves to become revolutionaries for the overthrow of the system of enslavement of Africans in America.

 Wikipedia says:

"Sarah Moore Grimké (1792–1873) and Angelina Emily Grimké (1805–1879), known as the Grimké sisters, were 19th-century Southern American Quakers, educators and writers who were early advocates of abolitionism and women's rights. Angelina Grimké married abolitionist Theodore Dwight Weld in May 1838, and changed her name to Angelina Grimké Weld.
They were born in Charleston, South Carolina, USA. Sarah Moore Grimke was born on November 26, 1792 and Angelina Emily Grimke was born on February 20, 1805. Throughout their lives, they traveled throughout the North, lecturing about their first hand experiences with slavery on their family's plantation. Among the first American women to act publicly in social reform movements, they received abuse and ridicule for their abolitionist activity. They both realized that women would have to create a safe space in the public arena to be effective reformers. They became early activists in the women's rights movement."

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grimk%C3%A9_sisters




I first learned of the Grimke Sisters from Angela Davis's (See video of Angela  infra) book  _Women, Race and Class_   http://books.google.com/books/about/Women_Race_Class.html?id=74QzFiv1w10C
                                                     


Professor Davis says there of them:

"Of all the pioneering women abolitionists, it was the Grimke sisters from South Carolina - Sarah and Angelina -- who most consistently linked the issue of slavery to the oppression of women. From the beginning of  their tumultuous lecturing career, they were compelled to defend their rights as women to be public advocates of abolition - and by implication to defend the rights of all women to register publically their opposition to slavery. "

 Sarah Grimke made the following argument for interpreting Genesis as providing for the equality of women and men:
Wikipedia :From Sarah Grimke's "Letter 1: The Original Equality of Woman" July 11, 1837. Sarah precedes the following quote with the comment that all translations are corrupt and the only inspired versions of the Bible are in the original languages.
We must first view woman at the period of her creation. "And God said, Let us make man in our own image, after our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing, in the image of God created he him, male and female created he them." In all this sublime description of the creation of man, (which is a difference intimated as existing between them. They were both made in the image of God; dominion was given to both over every other creature, but not over each other. Created in perfect equality, they were expected to exercise the viceregency intrusted to them by their Maker, in harmony and love.
Let us pass on now to the recapitulation of the creation of man: - "The Lord god formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul. And the Lord God said, it is not good that man should be alone, I will make him an help meet for him." All creation swarmed with animated beings capable of natural affection, as we know they still are; it was not, therefore, merely to give man a creature susceptible of loving, obeying, and looking up to him, for all that the animals could do and did do. It was to give him a companion, in all respects his equal; one who was like himself a free agent, gifted with intellect and endowed with immortality; not a partaker merely of his animal gratifications, but able to enter into all his feelings as a moral and responsible being. If this had not been the case, how could she have been a help meet for him? I understand this as applying not only to the parties entering into the marriage contract, but to all men and women, because I believe God designed woman to be a help meet for man in every good and perfect work. She was part of himself, as if Jehovah designed to make the oneness and identity of man and woman perfect and complete; and when the glorious work of their creation was finished, "the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy.
This blissful condition was not long enjoyed by our first parents. Eve, it would seem from history, was wandering alone amid the bowers of Paradise, when the serpent met with her. From her reply to Satan, it is evident that the command not to eat "of the tree that is in the midst of the garden," was given to both, although the term man was used when the prohibition was issued by God. "And the woman said unto the serpent, we may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden, but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall Ye touch it, lest Ye die." Here the woman was exposed to temptation from a being with whom she was unacquainted. She had been accustomed to associate with her beloved partner, and to hold communion with God and with angels; but of satanic intelligence, she was in all probability entirely ignorant. Through the subtlety of the serpent, she was beguiled. And "when she was that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof and did eat.
We next find Adam involved in the same sin, not through the instrumentality of a super-natural agent, but through that of his equal, a being whom he must have known was liable to transgress the divine command, because he must have felt that he was himself a free agent, and that he was restrained from disobedience only by the exercise of faith and love towards his Creator. Had Adam tenderly reproved his wife, and endeavored to lead her to repentance instead of sharing in her guilt, I should be much more ready to accord to man that superiority which he claims; but as the facts stand disclosed by the sacred historian, it appears to men that to say the least, there was as much weakness exhibited by Adam as by Eve. They both fell from innocence, and consequently from happiness, but not from equality.
Let us next examine the conduct of this fallen pair, when Jehovah interrogated them respecting their fault. They both frankly confessed their guilt. "The man said, the woman who thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree and I did eat. And the woman said, the serpent beguiled men and I did eat." And the Lord God said unto the woman, "Thou wilt be subject unto they husband, and he will rule over thee." That this did not allude to the subjection of woman to man is manifest, because the same mode of expression is used in speaking to Cain of Abel. The truth is that the curse, as it is termed, which was pronounced by Jehovah upon woman, is a simple prophecy. The Hebrew, like the French language, uses the same word to express shall and will. Our translators having been accustomed to exercise their lordship over their wives, and seeing only through the medium of a perverted judgment, very naturally, though I think not very learnedly or very kindly, translated it shall instead of will, and thus converted a prediction to Eve into a command to Adam; for observe, it is addressed to the woman and not to the man. the consequence of the fall was an immediate struggle for dominion, and Jehovah foretold which would gain the ascendancy; but as he created them in his image, as that image manifestly was not lost by the fall, because it is urged in Gen 9:6, as an argument why the life of man should not be taken by his fellow man, there is no reason to suppose that sin produced any distinction between them as moral, intellectual, and responsible beings. Man might just as well have endeavored by hard labor to fulfill the prophecy, thorns and thistles will the earth bring forth to thee, as to pretend to accomplish the other, "he will rule over thee," by asserting dominion over his wife.
Authority usurped from God, not give.
He gave him only over beast, flesh, fowl,
Dominion absolute: that right he holds
By God's donation: but man o'er woman
He made not Lord, such title to himself
Reserving, human left from human free,
Here then I plant myself. God created us equal; - he created us free agents; - he is our Lawgiver, our King, and our Judge, and to him alone is woman bound to be in subjection, and to him alone is she accountable for the use of those talents with which Her Heavenly Father has entrusted her. One is her Master even Christ.[3]
In response to a letter from a group of ministers who cited the Bible in reprimanding the sisters for stepping out of "woman's proper sphere" of silence and subordination, Sarah Grimke' wrote Letters on the Equality of the Sexes and the Condition of Woman in 1838.
She asserts that "men and women were CREATED EQUAL.... Whatever is right for a man to do, is right for woman....I seek 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 that ground which God destined us to occupy."[4]

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