Career
Archibald Grimké lived and worked in the Hyde Park neighborhood of the Boston area for most of his career. Beginning in the 1880s, he began to get active in politics and speaking out about the rise of white supremacy following the end of Reconstruction in the South. From 1883 to 1885, he was editor of the Hub, a Republican newspaper for African-American readers. Archibald supported equal rights for blacks in the papers and public lectures, which were popular in the nineteenth century. He became increasingly active in politics and was chosen for the Republican Party's state convention in 1884. That year he was also appointed to the board of Westborough Insane Hospital, a state hospital. Archibald became involved in the women's rights movement, which his aunts had supported, and addressed it in the Hub. He was elected president of the Massachusetts Woman Suffrage Association. Believing that the Republicans were not doing enough, he left the party in 1886. In 1889, he joined the staff of the Boston Herald as a special writer.
In the South, the situation for Blacks was deteriorating, and Archibald continued the struggle against racism, allying at times with other prominent leaders of the day. He had also become involved in Frederick Douglass' National Council of Colored People, a predecessor to the NAACP, which grappled with issues of education for blacks, especially in the South. Archibald disagreed with Booker T. Washington about emphasizing industrial and agricultural education for freedmen (the South still had a primarily agricultural economy). He believed there needed to be academic and higher education opportunities like he had.
In 1901, with several other men, he started The Guardian, a newspaper where they could express their views. They selected William Monroe Trotter as editor. Grimké and Trotter organized the Boston Literary and Historical Association, which at the time was a gathering of men opposed to Booker T. Washington's views. For a time, he was allied with W.E.B. Du Bois, but Grimké continued to make his own way between the two groups.
Despite earlier conflict with Washington and his followers, in 1905, Grimké started writing for The New York Age, the leading black paper; it was allied with Washington. Archibald wrote about national issues from his point of view, for instance, urging more activism and criticizing President Theodore Roosevelt for failing to adequately support black troops in Brownsville, Texas, where they were accused of starting a riot.
Continuing his interest in intellectual work, he served as president of the American Negro Academy from 1903 to 1919, which supported African-American scholars and promoted higher education for blacks. He published several papers with them, dealing with issues of the day, such as his analysis in "Modern Industrialism and the Negroes of the United States" (1908). He believed that capitalism, as practiced in the United States, could help freedmen who left agriculture to achieve independence and true freedom.
In 1907, he became involved with the Niagara Movement and later with the NAACP, both of which were founded by Du Bois. Men continued to struggle to find the best way to deal with racism and advance equal rights at a time when the lynching of black men in the South continued.
After his daughter graduated from college, Archibald became increasingly active as a leader in the NAACP, founded in 1909. First, he was active in Boston, writing letters protesting proposed federal legislation prohibiting interracial marriages. (The legislation was not passed.) In 1913, he was recruited by national leaders to become the president of the Washington, DC branch and moved to the capital with his daughter Angelina. As president, Grimké wrote detailed accounts of local racial injustices, such as inequitable distribution of educational funds, taking direct action in his community. His brother Francis and his wife Charlotte still lived there.
Grimké led the public protest in Washington, D.C., against the segregation of federal offices under President Woodrow Wilson, who acceded to the wishes of other Southerners in his cabinet. Grimké testified before Congress against it in 1914 but failed to gain changes. He also became a national vice-president of the NAACP. The organization supported the U.S. in World War I, but Grimké highlighted the racial discrimination against blacks in the military and worked to change it.
He fell ill in 1928. At the time, he and Angelina lived with his brother Francis, a widower. His daughter and brother cared for him until he died in 1930.
