Sarah (Moore) and Angelina (Emily) Grimke
Sarah is the eldest of the Grimke sisters, born in Charleston South
Carolina in November of 1792. Angelina, the youngest, was born in Massachusetts in February of 1805. The Grimke family consisted of the sisters, an aristocratic, slave owning father, Judge John Faucherand and Mother, Mary Smith Grimke. Sarah had the overwhelming desire to practice law, though due to her status as a women, she was not admitted, or allowed to attend any Universities that were available at the time. This was only the beginning to the discrimination and humiliation she was to experience in her fight against sexism.
Both Sarah and Angelina joined the Society of Friends (a.k.a. Quakers) in Philadelphia in their early twenties. Their time there strengthened their independent thinking skills. The sisters were unhappy with the Society of
Friends, due to the strict regulations they lived under. Soon afterward both sisters moved to North Carolina to join the Anti-Slavery movement.
In 1835 Angelina wrote a letter of support to Abolitionist leader
William Lloyd Garrison who published it in his newspaper The Liberator. The following year, 1836, she composed a thirty page pamphlet entitled An Appeal to the Christian Women of the South. This pamphlet urged southern women to persuade their influential husbands to re-examine the morality of the slavery institution.
A similar plea was made towards the Southern Church institutions months later in
An Epistle to the Clergy of the Southern States. Though praised by other abolitionists in the free states, officials in South Carolina burned copies and threatened imprisonment to the authors should they return to that state. During this time the sisters released their own family slaves after they were apportioned to them as part of the family estate.
Angelina also began the sister's speaking career in the private homes of
Philadelphia women. The sisters moved to New York in 1836 where they addressed the larger audiences of Churches and public halls. With all their good efforts the sisters were brought under fire from the General Association of
because it would anger her husband. She was afraid to go back to school and
...udents that she taught, that it was entirely possible to be a woman in the health field. She demonstrated to everyone around her, that women are able to be successful in health professions, and still maintain a healthy family life. Her work never stopped and she continued to advance in positions throughout her lifetime. Dorothy Case-Blechschmidt truly encompasses the meaning of a leader and role model to any woman who wants to enter a health profession field.
In the eighteenth century, the process of choosing a husband and marrying was not always beneficial to the woman. A myriad of factors prevented women from marrying a man that she herself loved. Additionally, the man that women in the eighteenth century did end up with certainly had the potential to be abusive. The attitudes of Charlotte Lennox and Anna Williams toward women’s desire for male companionship, as well as the politics of sexuality are very different. Although both Charlotte Lennox and Anna Williams express a desire for men in their poetry, Charlotte Lennox views the implications of this desire differently than Anna Williams. While Anna Williams views escaping the confines of marriage as a desirable thing, Charlotte Lennox’s greatest lament, as expressed by her poem “A Song,” is merely to have the freedom to love who she pleases. Although Charlotte Lennox has a more romantic view of men and love than Anna Williams, neither woman denies that need for companionship.
What her reasons for it were I don’t know. But she did a good job. She raised twelve children. She led a good life.”
law, or God's law if you will. Ultimately she felt that His law was right,
Up until and during the mid -1800’s, women were stereotyped and not given the same rights that men had. Women were not allowed to vote, speak publically, stand for office and had no influence in public affairs. They received poorer education than men did and there was not one church, except for the Quakers, that allowed women to have a say in church affairs. Women also did not have any legal rights and were not permitted to own property. Overall, people believed that a woman only belonged in the home and that the only rule she may ever obtain was over her children. However, during the pre- Civil war era, woman began to stand up for what they believed in and to change the way that people viewed society (Lerner, 1971). Two of the most famous pioneers in the women’s rights movement, as well as abolition, were two sisters from South Carolina: Sarah and Angelina Grimké.
During Col. A. D. Streight's cavalry raid across north Alabama (April 19-May 3, 1863), he was pursued by a Confederate force half the size of his Union company. Led by Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest, the Confederates had several advantages. They were riding horses; the Union troops were riding mules (except for a small contingent of cavalry composed of north Alabama Unionists who were showing Streight the way). Horses were faster and quieter. Stories from the north Alabama hills tell that one could hear the braying of Streight's mules for miles. For this reason, Southerners called Streight's Federals the "Jackass Cavalry." During the raid, a sixteen-year-old Gadsden, Alabama girl became one of the most well-known heroines of the Confederacy. In 1914, when French horse-armies were being slaughtered by German machine guns in World War I and the cavalry was instantly made obsolete, Bennett H. Young, a Confederate cavalry officer, published a book about several Confederate engagements, including the story of Streight's Alabama Raid and Emma Sansom.
After moving to Washington D.C. Barton began working as a clerk in the US Patent Office becoming the first woman to receive a government job and have a salary equal to a man’s. However her position was soon reduced to a copyist and then eliminated entirely.
To become the first to hold a position is a tremendous accomplishment; However, it is also something that may come with extra criticism and possibly scorn. Sandra Day O’Connor was the first woman to become a Supreme Court Justice. She was a remarkable person, born on March 26, 1930 in Texas. She began her education by attending Stanford and majoring in economics, then recognizing her interest in law, she returned to Stanford, and completed law school in two years as opposed to the standard three, finally graduating in 1952. After struggling to find work, O’Connor served as a civilian lawyer in the Quartermaster’s Corps in Germany, with her husband John Jay O’Connor. For six years following this, she worked as a stay at home mom raising her three sons, Scott, Brian and Jay. In 1969 she went back to work in politics, after being appointed to a vacant senate seat by Governor Jack Williams; Sandra was very successful, and was re-elected for this position twice. The year 1981, however, is when O’Connor earned what is likely to be considered her greatest achievement: she was appointed by Ronald Reagan to become the first ever woman Supreme Court Justice (biography.com 2012).
Dayton, Cornelia Hughes. Women Before the Bar: Gender, Law, And Society In Connecticut, 1639-1789. University of North Carolina Press, 1995.
During the late nineteenth-century, women went to court to continue to secure their rights to participate in public life: to vote, to be a justice of the peace, to be a notary public, to serve as school district directors, school committee officers, school officers, and prosecuting attorneys, an of course to practice law (Drachman, 1998).
In the early 1900’s, women and African Americans did not have any rights. When standing up for their rights they were sometimes punished for their views. It was also undesirable for women to speak in public. However, that did not stop Sarah and Angelina Grimke, because they believed in their rights and that they could change these social statuses. They were the first prominent female abolitionists. They faced hardships like sexism and traitors because they were both women and against slavery.
Like most things in the world, they have their place. A man's place is to get their education and to get a substantial job that would bring in the money for his family. Women were not expected to attend school or to get a job that exceeded from a housewife or a housekeeper. When Minerva tells her family that she aspires to become a lawyer, her Mother does not take her seriously. "'Ay, Dios mio, spare me. ... Just what we need, skirts in the law'" (10)! It is because women like Minerva do not typically think of doing a job that involve family or cleaning, the dream is laughable. The implication is that women studying law is considered "out-of-place." Therefore, stating that women are not expected to desire or be capable of doing something that a man can.
However, women desired a higher education. Elizabeth Blackwell is a prime example of women’s fight for a medical degree, one of the first STEM environments available to women. In order to kick-start her education she wrote to all of the doctors that she knew, requesting advice and help. However, most of the doctors replied that they thought it impossible, that a woman would not be able to endure the rigors of a medical education, and that they feared the competition that women doctors would bring. Elizabeth persisted, finally making her way to Philadelphia, a city famous for its study in medicine, to stay with Dr. Elder, one of the few supporters of her education. Once here she continued writing letters and actually found many friends who agreed to support her cause, but unfortunately universities were not included in this list of friends. Elizabeth then pursued an education at the University of Geneva in New York where the Medical Faculty and students agreed to accept her. While at first the university cared about the press coverage that Elizabeth’s spot would bring, she eventually established her rightful place as a student there. Although she encountered some resentment among the wives of doctors and other people living in the small town, Elizabeth ...
but had left because she did not like the religious environment. For a woman of