Angelina Weld Grimke
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Angelina Weld Grimké (February 27, 1880 – June 10, 1958) was an African-American lesbian[1] journalist and poet.
[edit] Biography
She was born in Boston, Massachusetts to a biracial family whose ancestors included both slaveowners and abolitionists. Her father Archibald Grimké was a lawyer who became the second Black to graduate from Harvard Law School. He served as Vice-President of the NAACP and was appointed consul to the Dominican Republic from 1894-1898. Her mother Sarah Stanley was a White woman from a middle-class family, about whom information is scarce.
Grimké's parents met in Boston. Archibald Grimké had established a law practice there after completing law school. He and Sarah Stanley married but faced much opposition from her family, due to concerns over race. The marriage did not last very long. Not too long after Angelina's birth, Sarah left the family and took Angelina with her. After Sarah began a career of her own, she sent Angelina, then seven, to live with her father. Angelina Grimké would have little to no contact with her mother after that. Sarah Stanley died several years later.
Grimké's great aunts were the famous abolitionists, Sarah and Angelina Grimké. They were both great leaders of Grimke. Her uncle, Francis J. Grimké, was a minister and her father's younger brother. Angelina's aunt by marriage to Francis J. Grimké was the diarist Charlotte Forten Grimké. Between 1894 and 1898, Angelina stayed with her uncle and aunt at their home, while her father fulfilled his appointment in the Dominican Republic. Grimké was also related to John Grimké Drayton of Magnolia Plantation.
Angelina Grimké attended the Boston Normal School of Gymnastics, and after graduating, she moved to Washington, D.C. with her father. In 1902, she began teaching English at Armstrong Manual Training school. She then left this position in 1916 to teach at legendary Dunbar High School. In addition, she spent her summers as a student of Harvard University.
Grimké wrote essays, short stories and poems which were published in The Crisis, Opportunity, The New Negro, Caroling Dusk, and Negro Poets and Their Poems. Some of her more famous poems include, The Eyes of My Regret, At April, and Trees.
She was an active writer and activist during the Harlem Renaissance. She counted as one of her friends during that time the poet Georgia Douglas Johnson.
Grimké also wrote a play called Rachel, which was published in 1920. A three-act drama, it was written for the NAACP as an attempt to rally support against the recently released film The Birth of a Nation. It was produced in 1916 in Washington, D.C., performed by an all-black cast. It was one of the first anti-lynching plays.
[edit] References
- ^ Audre Lorde, 'A burst of light: Living with cancer', A Burst of Light, Ithaca, NY: Firebrand Books, 1988, page 73
- Shockley, Ann Allen, Afro-American Women Writers 1746-1933: An Anthology and Critical Guide, New Haven, Connecticut: Meridian Books, 1989. ISBN 0-452-00981-2
