That's because she is in the forefront helping eradicate the sex trafficking going on in our state right now.
I had just the day before finished reading "The Invention of Wings" so I said to her, "you must know the Grimke sisters."
She did. Not because she'd read Sue Monk Kidd's book about them but because Sarah and Angelina Grimke were pioneer abolition women in putting and end to slavery and advocating women's rights.
Raised in South Carolina in the early 1800s, the Grimkes could have spent their lives as rich, privileged southern women. But that wasn't all it was cracked up to be.
On her 10th birthday, Sarah Grimke was given a gift all wrapped up in blue ribbons. It was her own personal slave. Somehow this did not seem right to Sarah.
She also had ambition. This would not be tolerated in a southern woman. Here is how her mother explained it in the book:
Every girl comes into the world with varying degrees of ambition...The truth...is that every girl must have ambition knocked out of her for her own good...and so it came to this, to being broken like a horse.
But, fortunately, it didn't work. Sarah and Angelina Grimke went on to be a remarkable force for freeing slaves and for freeing women. But at a huge price. They gave up everything, money, privilege, marriage and children.
When my daughter was in law school she had a colleague who made a lot of noise every time I saw her about how she was opposed to the feminist movement. I always wanted to remind her of women like the Grimke sisters, and so many others along the way, (including me) who sacrificed themselves in order for her to become a lawyer.
Thank you Grimke sisters. And thanks to the abolitionist I was introduced to on Wednesday.
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