Activism and legacy
Sarah and Angelina had come to loathe slavery and all its degradations. They had hoped that their new faith would be more accepting of their abolitionist beliefs than their former had been. However, their initial attempts to attack slavery caused them difficulties in the Quaker community. The sisters persisted despite their belief that the fight for women's rights was as important as the fight to abolish slavery. Although Sarah had the desire to 'equip women for economic independence and for social usefulness' [22], they continued to be attacked, even by some abolitionists, who considered their position extreme. In 1836, Sarah published An Epistle to the Clergy of the Southern States. In 1837, Letters on the Equality of the Sexes and the Condition of Women was published serially in a Massachusetts newspaper, The Spectator, and immediately reprinted in The Liberator, the newspaper published by radical abolitionist and women's rights leader William Lloyd Garrison. The letters were published in book form in 1838.
When the sisters were together in Philadelphia, they devoted themselves to charity work and to the Society of Friends (the proper name for the religion often called "Quaker"). Sarah began working toward becoming a clergy member but was continually discouraged by male members of the church. Sarah realized that, though the church was something she agreed with in theory, it was not delivering on its promises. It was around this time that anti-slavery rhetoric began entering public discourse.
Joining her sister in the American Anti-Slavery Society in 1836, Sarah originally felt that she had found the place where she truly belonged, in which her thoughts and ideas were encouraged. However, as she and Angelina began speaking not only on abolition but also on the importance of women's rights, they began to face much criticism. Their public speeches were seen as unwomanly because they spoke to mixed-gender audiences, called "promiscuous audiences" at the time. They also publicly debated men who disagreed with them. This was too much for the general public of 1837 and caused many harsh attacks on their womanhood; one line of thought suggested that they were both just poor "spinsters" displaying themselves in order to find any man who would be willing to take one.
In 1838, Angelina married Theodore Weld, a leading abolitionist who had been a severe critic of their inclusion of women's rights into the abolition movement. She retired to the background of the movement while being a wife and mother, though not immediately. Sarah completely ceased to speak publicly. Apparently Weld had recently written her a letter detailing her inadequacies in speaking. He tried to explain that he wrote this out of love for her, but said that she was damaging the cause, not helping it, unlike her sister. However, as Sarah received many requests to speak over the following years (as did Angelina), it is questionable whether her "inadequacies" were as bad as he described.
During the Civil War, Sarah wrote and lectured in support of President Abraham Lincoln.
Sarah Moore Grimké was the author of the first developed public argument for women's equality. She worked to rid the United States of slavery, Christian churches which had become "unchristian," and prejudice against African Americans and women.
Her writings gave suffrage workers such as Lucy Stone, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott several arguments and ideas that they would need to help end slavery and begin the women's suffrage movement.
Sarah Grimké is categorized as not only an abolitionist but also a feminist because she challenged the Society of Friends, which touted women's inclusion but denied her. It was through her abolitionist pursuits that she became more sensitive to the restrictions on women. She so opposed being subject to men that she refused to marry. Both Sarah and Angelina became very involved in the anti-slavery movement and published volumes of literature and letters on the topic. When they became well known, they began lecturing around the country on the issue. At the time women did not speak in public meetings, so Sarah was viewed as a leader in feminist issues. She openly challenged women's domestic roles.
The papers of the Grimké family are in the South Carolina Historical Society, Charleston, South Carolina. The Weld–Grimké papers are in the William L. Clements Library, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan. Papers of Sarah Grimké are held by the University of Texas Library, Austin, Texas. The Library of Congress holds 5 letters from her to Sarah Mapps Douglass.
The first volume of History of Woman Suffrage, published in 1881, is inscribed to the memory of the Grimké sisters, among others.
In 1998, the Grimké sisters were inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame.
In November 2019, the city of Boston named a newly reconstructed bridge over the Neponset River in the Hyde Park neighborhood the Grimké Sisters Bridge. The Grimké sisters are remembered on the Boston Women's Heritage Trail.
