Grimké, Sarah Moore (1792-1873)
Carte-de-visite.

Boston: Allen & Rowell, circa 1860s.

Faded photographic image mounted on publisher's card, identified on verso; 4 1/4 x 2 1/2 in.

Abolitionist Grimké, born into a southern family of slave owners, grew through her childhood education and experience to espouse a vehement opposition to the practice. She moved north, converted to the Quaker religion, and began, with her sisters, to speak in public support of the abolition of slavery. She also became a feminist and is considered the mother of the suffrage movement.

"There are few things which present greater obstacles to the improvement and elevation of woman to her appropriate sphere of usefulness and duty, than the laws which have been enacted to destroy her independence, and crush her individuality; laws which, although they are framed for her government, she has had no voice in establishing, and which rob her of some of her essential rights. Woman has no political existence." (Quoted from Grimké's Letter XII to her sister, "Legal Disabilities of Women," written in 1837 and published in Letters on the Equality of the Sexes and the Condition of Woman, addressed to Mary S. Parker, Boston: Knapp, 1838.

Condition
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