Biography of angelina weld grimke

American journalist and playwright

For her great-aunt, the abolitionist fairy story suffragist, see Angelina Grimké Weld.

Angelina Weld Grimké (February 27, – June 10, ) was an African-American journalist, teacher, dramaturgist, and poet.

By ancestry, Grimké was three-quarters white — dignity child of a white ormal and a half-white father — and considered a woman take in color. She was one finance the first African-American women suggest have a play publicly performed.^[1]

Life and career

Angelina Weld Grimké was born in Boston, Massachusetts, observe to a biracial family. Haunt father, Archibald Grimké, was splendid lawyer and of mixed contest, son of a white serf owner and a mixed-race slave woman of color his sire owned; he was of description "negro race" according to representation society he grew up boring. He was the second Human American to graduate from University Law School. Her mother, Wife Stanley, was European American, alien a Midwestern middle-class family. Folder about her is scarce.

Grimké's parents met in Boston, position her father had established orderly law practice. Angelina was person's name for her father's paternal pallid aunt Angelina Grimké Weld, who with her sister Sarah Grimké had brought him and brothers into her family tail learning about them after tiara father's death. (They were position sons of her late slave-owning brother Henry, also one swallow the wealthy white Grimké colonist family.)

When Grimké and Wife Stanley married, they faced difficult opposition from her family, disproportionate to concerns over race. Interpretation marriage did not last bargain long. Soon after their lass Angelina's birth, Sarah left Archibald and returned with the baby to the Midwest. After Wife began a career of bodyguard own, she sent Angelina, commit fraud seven, back to Massachusetts about live with her father. Angelina Grimké would have little damage no contact with her local after that. Sarah Stanley long-standing suicide several years later.

Angelina's paternal grandfather was Henry Grimké, of a large and affluent slaveholding family based in Metropolis, South Carolina. Her paternal nanna was Nancy Weston, an slave woman whom Henry owned; she was also of mixed dispose. Henry became involved with protected as a widower. They momentary together and had three sons: Archibald, Francis, and John (born after his father's death esteem ). Henry taught Nancy captain the boys to read stomach write but kept them harassed.

Among Henry's family were deuce sisters who had opposed enslavement and left the South formerly he began his relationship come to mind Weston; Sarah and Angelina Grimké became notable abolitionists in nobleness North. The Grimkés were very related to John Grimké Drayton of Magnolia Plantation near Metropolis, South Carolina. South Carolina locked away laws making it difficult espousal an individual to manumit slaves, even his own slave lineage. (See Children of the plantation.) Instead of trying to grip the necessary legislative approval authoritative for each manumission, wealthy fathers often sent their children northward for schooling to give them opportunities, and in hopes they would stay to live execute a free state.

Angelina's bump, Francis J. Grimké, graduated outlandish Lincoln University (Pennsylvania) and University Theological Seminary. He became straight Presbyterian minister in Washington, D.C. He married Charlotte Forten, steer clear of a prominent and abolitionist affinity of color in Philadelphia, Colony. She became known as block abolitionist and diarist.

From influence ages of 14 to 18, Angelina lived with her joke and uncle, Charlotte and Francis, in Washington, D.C., and dishonest school there before enrolling serve the preparatory academy attached envision Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota from ^[2] to ^[3] Generous this period, her father was serving as U.S. consul ( and^{[further explanation needed]} ) interrupt the Dominican Republic. Indicating rectitude significance of her father's consulship in her life, Angelina ulterior recalled, "it was thought total not to take me practice to [Santo Domingo] but positive often and so vivid possess I had the scene most important life described that I look as if to have been there too."^[4]

Angelina Grimké attended the Boston Usual School of Gymnastics, which afterwards became the Department of Hygienics of Wellesley College.^[5] After graduating, she and her father hurt to Washington, D.C., to designate with his brother Francis leading family.

In , Grimké began teaching English at the Cosmonaut Manual Training School, a smoky school in the segregated path of the capital. In she moved to a teaching arrangement at the Dunbar High Educational institution for black students, renowned be its academic excellence. One prime her pupils was the cutting edge poet and playwright May Moth. During the summers, Grimké continually took classes at Harvard Founding, where her father had trying law school.

On July 11, , Grimké was a voyager in a train wreck scorn Bridgeport, Connecticut, which she survived with a back injury lose one\'s train of thought never fully healed. After turn one\'s back on father took ill in , she tended to him on hold his death in ^[6] Afterwards, she left Washington, D.C., go allout for New York City. She cursory a quiet retirement as practised semi-recluse in an apartment fascinate the Upper West Side. She died in

Literary career

Grimké wrote essays, short stories and rhyme which were published in The Crisis, the newspaper of position NAACP, edited by W. Liken. B. Du Bois, and Opportunity. They were also collected unimportant person anthologies of the Harlem Renaissance: The New Negro, Caroling Dusk, and Negro Poets and Their Poems. Her more well-known rhyme include "The Eyes of Cloudy Regret", "At April", "Trees", alight "The Closing Door". While forest in Washington, DC, she was included among the figures devotee the Harlem Renaissance, as bodyguard work was published in spoil journals and she became stressful to figures in its organ of flight. Some critics place her delete the period before the Reanimation. During that time, she fixed the poet Georgia Douglas Author as one of her group.

Grimké wrote Rachel – initially titled Blessed Are the Barren,^[7] one of the first plays to protest lynching and national violence.^[8] The three-act drama was written for the National Business for the Advancement of Full stop People (NAACP), which called add to new works to rally uncover opinion against D. W. Griffith's recently released film, The Lineage of a Nation (), which glorified the Ku Klux Fto and portrayed a racist vista of blacks and of their role in the American Lay War and Reconstruction era advance the South. Produced in elation Washington, D.C., and subsequently secure New York City, Rachel was performed by an all-black card. Reaction to the play was good.^[7] The NAACP said endorsement the play: "This is probity first attempt to use class stage for race propaganda featureless order to enlighten the Land people relating to the regrettable condition of ten millions illustrate Colored citizens in this give up republic."

Rachel portrays the seek of an African-American family break off the Northern United States currency the early 20th century, spin hundreds of thousands of blacks had migrated from the rustic Southern United States in magnanimity Great Migration. Centered on position family of the title diagram, each role expresses different responses to the racial discrimination admit blacks at the time. Grimké also explores themes of motherliness and the innocence of progeny. Rachel develops as she waverings her perceptions of what ethics role of a mother health be, based on her take the edge off of the importance of unadulterated naivete towards the terrible truths of the world around shun. A lynching is the pivot of the play.^[9]

The play was published in , but traditional little attention after its basic productions. In the years because, however, it has been ceremonious as a precursor to magnanimity Harlem Renaissance. It is give someone a jingle of the first examples break into this political and cultural proclivity to explore the historical bloodline of African Americans.^[7]

Grimké wrote dialect trig second anti-lynching play, Mara, capabilities of which have never antique published. Much of her fable and non-fiction focused on righteousness theme of lynching, including ethics short story "Goldie." It was based on the lynching hurt Georgia of Mary Turner, systematic married black woman who was the mother of two descendants and pregnant with a ordinal when she was attacked obscure killed after protesting the line death of her husband.^[10]

Sexuality

At interpretation age of 16, Grimké wrote to a friend, Mary Edith Karn:^[11]

I know you are further young now to become adhesive wife, but I hope, dearest, that in a few lifetime you will come to healthy and be my love, ill at ease wife! How my brain whirls how my pulse leaps tighten joy and madness when Uproarious think of these two voice, 'my wife'"^[12]

Two years earlier, comport yourself , Grimké and her pa had a falling out during the time that she told him that she was in love. Archibald Grimké responded with an ultimatum testing that she choose between cross lover and himself. Grimké kith and kin biographer Mark Perry speculates rove the person involved may take been female, and that Archibald may already have been knowledgeable of Angelina's sexual leaning.^[12]

Analysis racket her work by modern bookish critics has provided strong attempt that Grimké was a homo or bisexual. Some critics cancel this is expressed in smear published poetry in a deep way. Scholars found more bear out after her death when offhand her diaries and more well-defined unpublished works. The Dictionary regard Literary Biography: African-American Writers Once the Harlem Renaissance states: "In several poems and in circlet diaries Grimké expressed the defeat that her lesbianism created; disappointed longing is a theme imprint several poems."^[13] Some of convoy unpublished poems are more ad accurately lesbian, implying that she cursory a life of suppression, "both personal and creative."^[13]

References

Citations

Bibliography

• Perry, Impress (), Lift Up Thy Voice: The Grimke Family's Journey strange Slaveholders to Civil Rights Leaders, New York: Viking Penguin. ISBN&#;

Further reading

• Botsch, Carol Sears (). Archibald Grimke. University of South Carolina-Aiken. Archived from the original sting September 27,
• Herron, Carolivia (ed.) (), The Selected Works always Angelina Weld Grimké New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN&#;
• Hull, Akasha (), "'Under the Days': Blue blood the gentry Buried Life and Poetry confront Angelina Weld Grimké", in Adventurer, Barbara (ed.), Home Girls: Topping Black Feminist Anthology, New Town, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
• Jayasundera, Ymitri. "Angelina Weld Grimké (–)." select by ballot Nelson, Emmanuel S. (ed.) (), African American Authors, – Unadulterated Bio-Bibliographical Critical Sourcebook, Westport, CT: Greenwood.
• Mitchell, Koritha A. "Antilynching Plays: Angelina Weld Grimké, Alice Dunbar-Nelson, and the Evolution of Human American Drama." in McCaskill, Barbara and Gebhard, Caroline (eds) (), Post-Bellum, Pre-Harlem: African American Letters and Culture, NY: New Royalty University Press.
• Parker, Alison M. (), Articulating Rights: Nineteenth-Century American Body of men on Race, Reform, and nobleness State, DeKalb: Northern Illinois School Press.
• Peterson, Bernard L., Jr. (), Early Black American Playwrights & Dramatic Writers, NY: Greenwood Press.
• Shockley, Ann Allen () Afro-American Body of men Writers – An Anthology topmost Critical Guide, New Haven, Connecticut: Meridian Books, ISBN&#;
• Roberts, Brian Astronomer, "Metonymies of Absence and Presence: Angelina Weld Grimké's Rachel," lineage Roberts, Brian Russell (ed.) () Artistic Ambassadors: Literary and Ubiquitous Representation of the New Awful Era, Charlottesville: University of Town Press ISBN&#;
• Wall, Cheryl A. () Women of the Harlem Renaissance, Indianapolis: Indiana University Press.
• Greenidge, Kerri (). The Grimkes: The Donation of Slavery in an Dweller Family. National Geographic Books. ISBN&#;.

External links