Angelina Grimké

(1805 - 1879)

Born in Charleston, South Carolina, to a slaveholding family, Angelina Grimké moved in 1829 to Philadelphia, where she and her sister Sarah became involved in the Quaker community and the abolitionist movement. During her travels on the lecture circuit, she met fellow abolitionist Theodore Dwight Weld; they began an epistolary friendship that ended with him sending her a missive covered in giant text proclaiming, “And I have loved you since the first time I met you.” They married in a ceremony officiated by two ministers—one Black, one white—and served a cake made with sugar produced without enslaved labor. Grimké omitted the word obey in her vows.