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Well, our last speaker and and we have plenty of time for you. Miss Grimke plenty of time. So again, is Angelina Grimke and outstanding abolitionist. From an outstanding family, my name is Angelina Grimke. I'm so happy to be with you all. Today I'm going to tell you a bit of my story but I'm also going to try to tie it in because how many of you have heard that Grimke name in this part of Washington d.c.? We're going to make sure that I wrap up my story but just how that name got to be so powerful and wonderful and is still a part of the fabric Washington d.c. today. What I was born? In 1805. The 13th of 13 children in Charleston, South Carolina. And I had an older sister named Sarah. But I was born old enough to be named among godmother. So, Sarah, and I became very, very close to looked out for me when I was little growing up. And so, I'm going to tell you a little bit about Sarah to, as I tell the rim key store it. So, let me Begin by something that happened to Sarah when she was little. You see, my father was a third-generation Plantation over. He was a judge in the state of South Carolina, And a very well respected and well-known, man and a slave. Now, the way that plantations were set up was that the family never got to see what happened to the slaves. After they finished, the work that they did with the family. And one day, little Sarah snuck out back behind some of the outer buildings and she got to watch the slave being lashed. And lashed. And lunch and it upset her so much. She ran in the house and ran down the front steps on into Bay. Street down to the docks. Found there a ship captain and said to the man, sir, please, please take me to a land where there's no slavery. She could not believe this kind of abhorrent Behavior was going on her father's property. I didn't know the story till I was a little bit older, but I had my own Epiphany to when I was about four or five years old as in Sunday school class one day, And it was a hot day. We needed to have the window opened. And so my Sunday school teacher, tapped a little slave boy, sitting outside of the Sunday school class asked him to come in and push, open a great big window. Well, this is Darling. Little boy came in, with a most precious little big brown eyes. I could see through his Gauzy, like tunic, there was blood on the back of his back and the back of the tunic, and he had lashes and lash marks and I realized with this child had been through. And I think got to climb back up on that windowsill. I thought to myself was the Sunday school teacher, not doing that herself. Well, I didn't say anything to put it away left. When I first saw the back of his suit, it upset me so that I vomited on the ground. Well, that did not make my son to school teacher Terribly Happy with may not. They're not really after that. And so that Sunday in church, the sermon was about Matthew, 25:40. Whatever you do to the least of these. You do to me, this was a story about how if we treat the rest of the world like Christ would treat the rest of the world, that would mean that this is exactly how piece would happen on this planet. My goodness, we couldn't be living in. Am I hope the political culture a try? I kept to myself. I didn't say much. But then Sarah had another event happened to her too. She had her own little slave down named Hattie and Sarah loved her so much. She taught her how to read and do right? And they put a little towel down under the door at night. So that mother and father wouldn't know that there was a little slave in there in there after Sarah had gone to bed and Sarah taught her the alphabet and taught her, how to read, and taught her, how to write. And one night, my mother wondering what was going on in there. Open the door and she found little Hattie and Sarah sitting in front of the fireplace, practicing their words and their alphabet and mother had a rage films fit and poor little Hollywood taken out back behind the house and suffered the same indignation is that little slave by odd scene in Sunday School? Had it died a couple months after that, Sarah and I realized we had kindred spirit Hearts going on here. We didn't like what we were seeing Sarah went to father and said this cannot continue to happen. This is not the work of the lord. We see no stories and the new gospel. Of the Bible that talk about any of the Disciples of Christ having slaves. Bobby. Wouldn't listen you just simply said you girls ask too many questions. Well, when Sarah was 18, she'd had enough. She left our Episcopalian. Church joined the local Quaker Church find out a little bit more to her liking because many of the people. There were abolitionists. Imagine that down Charleston. South Carolina, that time. Sarah eventually left. She didn't want to do with all the parties in the gaiety, and the dressed enough that you had to do in Charleston. So you could find yourself. Amanda get married to Sarah began to realize that if you're a woman that lived in the South you were as much a slave is the slaves themselves. You couldn't speak out. You couldn't say, let's be nicer to this slaver that slave because she loses her dignity. She could potentially lose her family and her house

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Sarah left and went to Philadelphia and she found Kindred Spirits, among the Quakers up. There will be in the talker that I am. I decided that I would try things a little bit differently, and when I was about 18, rather than join the Episcopalian Church, I thought I should go to them first, you know, they were always talking about gradualism. If we ever get rid of slavery, we gradually. I don't know why they couldn't just stop it now because there's all them Farms up. North where people have harvested crops and doing all kinds of things without slaves. So gradualism seems silly to me, so I asked our pastor if I could have just a few minutes with the Vestry of the church, Tableau conversation with them about. If we're going to do the word of the lord, we need to start gnome backyards law. Had about maybe three minutes with that Vestry and then they asked me to leave and not ever come back. My Hope was the Presbyterians down. The road would have a better understanding And perhaps be much more Kindred and heart spirit. So I went down and found rev McDowell and he and I had some wonderful conversations and wrote back and forth and he to believe that we all needed to be treated equal. And so I told him what my vision was that we needed to just get rid of this slavery stuff. So he said, I could speak to session. I did and I had the exact same kind of audience. I had the Episcopalian Church. It was very clear to me that this life in South Carolina in Charleston was not going to be mine for the rest of my life. So I bless her heart came down to Charleston. Picked me up we moved to Philadelphia, never to come back to Charleston again. Well, the Quakers up there. We're lovely with us. But we had our own concerns about the Quakers to because you see in the back of the Quaker church. I was a little bench and that's where the Negro Quakers were supposed to sit. Well, why would the Negro we need real quick is not able to sit with everybody else, so Sarah and I got up. We just sat down with them. Well, Elders of the church went quite pleased with that and I think they kind of realized that what we were doing was exactly what the good Lord had hoped. We would do we treat each other like equal to be kind to each other like equals. that was kind of the first time we began to what, Rob the Quakers sort of the wrong way, Tom went on, and I realized that my thinking was that the Negro of the country and the women in the country were enslaved, robber enslaved. It was the white man run in the country. So I learned about an abolitionist and William Lloyd Garrison and he had a newspaper called The Liberator and it was all about abolitionism and how we should make this happen and they believed not in gradualism. But immediate isn't. So I thought. Well, I'm right, mr. Garrison, a little personal note, tell them about some of the things I'd seen on my father's Plantation, which we might Ugly Mutt, ugly, sent that off expecting to hear, kindly back from mr. Garrison well, mr. Garrison went ahead and publish that letter and it went Nationwide and his Liberator newspaper. It wasn't too long before the rest of the newspapers in the country, picked up on it and pretty soon. My name was not Angelina any more modern name was now devil Lena Well, I thought now I found my cause and I have a reason to continue to speak out in the good lord. Gave me a mouth and the tongue and the energy to do it in the Forsyth. So I just figured, I'd just keep on talking and so, The state of Massachusetts heard about me and wanted to know more about my thinking about women should be negro should be and when I can actually come and speak to their legislature but it was a far cry from Episcopalian Church. The Presbyterian Church, the South Carolina, I'll witness spoken off spoke my mind and I spoke a clearly and I had very indeed colorful ugly stories to tell about what it was like to have been a slave owner in South I do have to tell you that part of my Heritage is abhorrent and embarrassing to me, but the end of my story will make up for it so hang on to your hats. So during this time, Sarah and I began to do some lecturing and I had the opportunity to speak at Philadelphia's brand. New lecture hall in 1838 just been finished felt about two weeks before that. During that time, angry mobs didn't like the abolitionists were running around the country. Grab an abolitionist, beating them up while William Lloyd, Garrison himself was carried in and dragged behind a carriage one night, deep into the night, almost died. If you were caught with abolitionism literature on you, you could be finds. You could be jailed. You could see the hatred in this country has gotten pretty gosh. Darn ugly. Well, I wanted to speak out against this and so I did one night in this lecture hall and only been open a couple of weeks. And during my lecture, the mob and Mom yet again gathered outside, this lecture hall, And I just said, I'm going to keep on speaker. No mob is going to make me stop, Rick Smith thrown through Windows Stones pieces of fabric with flames alighting them. They were trying to burn the place down. We do know, two weeks later that angry mob, that hateful destructive mob of white people. Burned that lecture hall down, there was nothing left. Well interestingly enough and the parallel to all of that I've already mentioned theater. Well to you yes, you're the call that name I've just mentioned but he and I started writing letters to each other. I would like to share a couple of those letters with you. Would you be interested in that care? My Bible with me all the time. I took these little letters right inside my Bible and they just really are a wonderful Foundation. For you understanding, how important Theodore was to me? So, it's March now. I've 1836 And this is what Federer has to say. To me der Angelina paragraph in your last letter, Angelina, went to Ma. So you feel are wrong. Do you see? We had a difference of opinion about women and some of the slavery issues but it wasn't that big a difference. And you think what I said was not written in the spirit of love like a Lord commanded us. I've not a word to utter either in justification or palliation. I know it was surprised and even Amaze you Angelina when I say to you as I now do For that for all whole long time, you have had my phone. Your letters to William Lloyd, Garrison, formed, an era in my feelings and a crisis in my history that Drew my spirit are years by irrepressible affinities, I have read it over and over. Notwithstanding your strict Quaker sensibilities. My heart has yet turned to you, I strove long against it from the time I met you in New York to this moment in which I write the same state of mind has continued on varying. Except it is gathered strength with every day. I have no expectation and almost Hope that my feelings in any degree would be reciprocated by you and if they are not please tell me. Frankly the whole truth I would Barrett and Conquer my feelings and consider the outcome. God's will. You're abiding friend, Theodore Well, on April 10th I decided to write Theodore back. Would you like to hear what I said?

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Yeah, letter was indeed a great surprise my brother and yet it was no surprise at all. It was a surprise because of you so mastered your feelings as never to betray them. It was no surprise because of the depths of my own heart there was found a response so full of strength and power that I find my heart. Trusts you, holy, I do not understand how you could have, no hope that your feelings are not shared by me. I feel my Theodora that the two halves of one hole at Wayne and two bodies animated by one. So, and that the Lord has given that to each other in God's sight and Lena are those letters kind of sealed, the deal from Theodore? And I, and we were actually married a couple of days after I gave that lecture in the lecture hall with a mob stood outside. We still believed in equality for all of God's creation. That at that wedding ceremony, we had a negro clergy person and a white clergy person and all our guests were colors of all shapes and sizes. Because that's the way the Lord wanted it. Jesus never said, love one another except those that cos never said that. And if that's your way of thinking Theodore and I agreed, you might not be thinking about sitting in a church on Sunday, being all Pious, because God loves us all, Time went on Theodore and I were married, we had three children, 1848 came around. Some of, you know what happened in that great year, while these wonderful women up in, Seneca Falls, New York, got together, decided to have a convention, a women's convention. I'm Frederick Douglass, was one of the people that attended that convention. Sadly, at that time, I was Ill with having my third child and I could not attend, but I knew Elizabeth Cady Stanton and I knew the crease chamade, and I knew the ladies that Help with that convention together, they had my heart, they had my soul and they did good work, couple of years. After that, the women's convention happened in Akron, Ohio, 1850, 1850, 1851. And the key speaker for that convention was Sojourner Truth. And Sojourner, Truth gave a wonderful speech where she talked about ain't IR Woman and we all agreed and hearing all that. Yes, the good Lord made us all and we were reminded of that piece out of Galatians that the gospel teaches us. There is no Jew nor Greek. There is no male or female. There is no slave or free person. We're all equal in the sight of God. However, Theodore, and I could see all the anger running around this country. Many companies now, organized and fueled by the slave industry, while Brooks Brothers itself, probably made the little tunic. That little boy, wore that day. I was in that Sunday school class. You may have heard Brooks Brothers. I've also heard Aetna. Insurance Company. Well, they got their start Insurance seeing slaves and I don't, What you ensure in your life right now? I'm sure it's not slay because I know that and it's supposedly in 1863, but a lot of companies are making money off of this office leaves thing Theodore and I was sure that would be an uprising. We were sure there would be a civil war. and there was sadly, there was but as that time approached, And the early 1860s, I was reading a newspaper one day, and it talked about a young man who just delivered this wonderful speech up in Pennsylvania. He'd gone to Lincoln University and his name is Archibald Grimke. I said to Sara to know that Archibald Grimke in our family history. Oh no, we did not. Well, I looked up this Archibald estimate, could come over forty one day and we found out the most amazing. What you see are older, brother, Henry. He had been married. He had a son named Montague. And then his wife passed after his wife passed, he took up with the nurse. Made a woman named Nancy Weston, he and Nancy. Weston had three children, Archibald Francis and John Archibald is and Francis are indeed the personification of surviving trial and tribulation for what happened when they were little as Montague, sold them back into slavery. After promise in their father, he'd make sure they grew up as Free People. Terrible things happen. Francis went into hiding for a couple of years, but the good news is, they did eventually end up at Lincoln University, we sat down and talked, we discovered that what Archibald really wanted to do was go to law school, Sarah, not put our pennies together. We made sure he got a chance to get a law degree at Harvard. We also made a chance to make sure that Francis who felt called to be a pastor, got a chance to go to Princeton And these two young men ended up leaving Philadelphia leave in the college environments and move down a Washington. D.c. Archibald came down here and became a console to the Dominican Republic. He went on to do great things, including helping to found the National Association for colored people in. National American Association for colored people, he did groundings who did not always agree with some of the people that he traveled with and he would stand up Himself. And Francis became for 50 years. The pastor at 15th Street Presbyterian Church.

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Right here in Washington D.c. when Frederick Douglass decided, it was time for him to get married a second time. My brother mice, nephew, Francis conducted the ceremony. So, within my whole time frame, I'm humbled to speak in front of you, I feel somewhat inadequate to speak in front of you, but I do have burning in my heart. This reality of equal rights for all people, no matter who they are. I believe that. Then I believed it now and I hope by the time y'all hit year 2022. This is firmly embedded in this nation's Doctrine. I hope everybody can vote. Not just men that negro man and women can vote. To because how is it change ever gonna happen in this great night? If we don't have voting rights and I hope that that voting is taken seriously and nobody ever tries to take at anybody else. Oh, I have so many hopes for this great land and I do believe it's possible. I have a hope someday that maybe Washington. D.c. might have a negro woman as its mayor. That's what one of my hopes is I don't know about you all but I also don't want history to repeat itself. I'm really honored to have stood before you all today as Angelina Grimke weld, the good news. Is that Archibald went on and had a daughter with woman named Sarah. Ironically, also Sarah, and her name was Angelina. Weld Grimke the opposite of mind. So, if you ever read about to Angelina's, that is the other story. Francis went on to marry a lovely woman named Charlotte Forten who was from a Philadelphia free negro family and she helped pursued the issue of abolitionism in terms of their worlds too. So I don't know quite how to Civil Wars going to play up. I hope that little Skirmish that happened in Port Stephens, which really wasn't quite. So to those Skirmish will begin to be the changing of the tide. You know. I really was not very crazy about that Jubal early. Man, I heard some terrible stories about him and I've always thought of somebody is pretty terrible at home and their neighbors speaks out negatively against, not means they're pretty bad words. So I'm honored to stand here with you all today at Fort Stevens and honor the best of my family heritage, not the mess of what was left back in Charleston, South Carolina. And it's interesting to note. Also, guys, my father moved into his days of dying. He chose not to be buried in Charleston. He chose not to be buried with my mother. They had their falling onto quietly passed a New Jersey, but I think in the end he understood that He had this about his obedience to God and his creator and to Jesus Christ himself. So, as you leave here today, please can't keep history alive in your mind's and in your hearts, we can't go back and repeat hateful mean-spirited, things, we can't go on. Well, imagine of all kinds of freedoms happen in the ugly, kind of when we do be killing each other and then we wouldn't have a country much anymore, would we? So I want to tell you say a prayer sister, What the Lord Has to tell you? You'd like to ask me some questions. I'd be happy to take a few questions from you as I close here but I want to tell you, try to keep this land free, make God Bless America, and may God bless each and every one of you. Thank you. I was the extra field of us to, okay, she couldn't tell ya, we need to listen, y'all going to leave here today and you can decide which you can do to make equality happen or not. You can write a letter to your Congress person who you're faster.

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You can show up and sit down with somebody, who's sitting all by themselves, one day in the library, who may be of a different color, a different persuasion of whatever sort. And try to get to know them because when we can connect and know each other know our history I know our stories that's when we can really do that. Good work at the world that's how we can end up loving each other. Yes, ma'am. She would have been no Sarah saw the tubbing lash behind the house is for that happen. Sarah would have been more like about eight or nine the slave girl might have been seven or eight close in age could because they began as friends and then she became a slave which I think is a porn myself, I've never danced like I can't even imagine wanting to encourage. So I think it erupted the rest of your question. Basically, yes. Oh, she suffered horribly. I would tell you, Sarah suffered Hubble, probably not physically, but emotionally, she never wanted another slave. That's what began her transition out of Charleston, South Carolina. She knew she could not live in that kind of a world

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again. Good night. Not be affected and not speak up. You know, my husband Theodore and I and with Sarah's help. We wrote a book called 1,000 testimonies of slaves. It's a nice little book. I had it over at my table earlier today and you can still buy it actually on fun. I don't know how y'all do this in your world, but you can use something called Amazon, not in my world. That was something in a jungle in South America, but it told story after Story of all these. Brenda's things that were how slaves Retreat creatures. That would beat up 15 slaves before they went off to church on a Sunday morning. and with all the lashes, all the lashes these slaves had and its social functions, the owners and even the clergy person with brag about how then they pour turpentine or saltwater on these wounds. Oh, there's over 1000 of these different stories. You know, the stories were more than that because they're damp darn are four million slaves in this country. At one time. I could tell you some more horrendous things, but I know I'm being recorded and I really don't want. Put myself in a situation of public outcry. Any other questions? Yes.

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I lived until 1879, I lived, until after the Civil War, I am dressed today. And one of my only dressy outfits. As a matter of fact, this dress is made from my mama's bed spread this. I don't normally dress this fancy if you were special crowd today. This is also a third stage morning because you probably know about the different Victorian Customs that happened during the time of the Civil War and Queen Victoria over here. So it's still dark and somber, it's black. and I'm not so sure I'm ever going to give up when third stage because this country is going through such a travesty Anything else? You've been a delightful audience if you want to speak to me, one-on-one after Rose. I'll be happy to stick around for about the, thank you for honoring Sports Stevens today, and all the wonderful volunteers that made today happen. I do Marvin's, one of them. I know Melanie's one of them are no Gary's one of them, all of you had special things to do and you've written a book about this ma'am. So, I'm really Angelina Grimke and Len Garber Heritage. Among the greatest of Americans? We want to touch your heart because you have touched out. Oh, thank you. Thank you. And I hope that the alliance deserve the Civil War defenses of Washington will have you back over and over and over again. It would be such an honor to be such a of you've been the highlight of my day. Well, you know the Lord Works through us and all kinds of different Williams.

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All right, be good, do good things. Remember Terry said Hazel Mexican love down.