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2016-17 JOHN NEAR GRANT Recipient Crossing the Line: Angelina Grimké’s and Sojourner Truth’s Motivations as Representative of the Interaction between the Women’s Suffrage and Abolition Movements Molly Wancewicz, Class of 2017

Crossing the Line: Angelina Grimké’s and Sojourner Truth’s Motivations as Representative of the Interaction between the Women’s Suffrage and Abolition Movements

Molly Wancewicz 2017 John Near Scholar Mentors: Ms. Julie Wheeler, Mrs. Lauri Vaughan April 12, 2017

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In the 1820s and 1830s in the United States, Sojourner Truth, a former slave, and Angelina Grimké, a former slave-owner, ventured into the political scene by battling for equality for both women and slaves, and their advocacies served to highlight the intricacies of preabolition social equality movements.1 Though no evidence that the women ever met or commented upon one another’s work exists, Grimké and Truth fought for similar causes but drew inspiration from differing motivations. The experiences of Angelina Grimké and Sojourner Truth accurately represent the complex intersection between the women’s suffrage and abolition movements: both women’s political activism began with abolition and expanded to include feminist causes, but for Grimké, the shift in focus was primarily caused by encounters with sexism, while Truth began advocating for women’s rights mainly due to her history of oppression.

Issues to consider when evaluating causation as it relates to the women’s shift in political focus include the influence of each woman’s background as well as the method of discerning motivation. Truth’s and Grimké’s different backgrounds, each with distinct and intense ties to slavery, necessitate consideration when analyzing primary sources, though the text at hand may not reference the author’s personal background. For instance, though an activist may cite religious reasons for opposing slavery, their opinion may also be tinted by previous experience, even if this influence is unconscious. Emotions and memories related to past experiences will likely influence analysis of social issues relevant to those experiences. Therefore, accurate readings of primary texts require consideration of historical and personal contexts. In addition, because Sojourner Truth was illiterate, evaluating her motivations by considering the specific

1

"Sojourner Truth," in World of Sociology (Farmington Hills, MI: Gale, 2001), accessed June 12, 2016, Biography in Context., Angela Lahr, "'Bowed in the Dust': Guilt and Conscience in the Life of Angelina Grimké Weld," The Historian 77, no. 1 (Spring 2015): 5, accessed September 17, 2016, EBSCOhost Explora.

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wording of her writings may fail to yield ideal conclusions.2 Because Olive Gilbert, the woman who transcribed many of Truth’s narratives, including her autobiography, was Caucasian, the words filtered through Gilbert’s hand may not share the same vocabulary, meaning, and intensity as Truth’s own diction (though much of the content is likely accurate).3 Combatting this issue necessitates an examination of other primary sources, primarily Sojourner Truth’s public speeches alongside analysis of her writings: records of speeches will contain Truth’s own vocabulary. Angelina Grimké, however, was literate, so the diction of her personal writings should provide accurate insights into her opinions and motivations.

Angelina Grimké Much of Angelina Grimké’s motivation for becoming an activist for abolition, an advocacy on which she embarked before her foray into feminism, was based on her personal history.4 Grimké’s family owned a large contingent of slaves on their rice plantation, and she left their home in South Carolina for the North in protest, in 1829 when she was 24.5 Evidence from Grimké’s personal writings suggests that she experienced a pervasive guilt for her complicity in the institution of slavery.6 In fact, sixty of 130 entries in her diary are based upon Grimké’s feelings of guilt or discussed them extensively.7 Specific instances of rhetoric include the following: “I have been suffering for the last two days on account of H[enry’]s boy having run

2

Cheryl I. Harris, "Finding Sojourner's Truth: Race, Gender, and the Institution of Property," Cardozo Law Review 18, no. 2 (November 1996): 317, accessed June 15, 2016, HeinOnline.

3

Ibid.

4

Lahr, "'Bowed in the Dust,'" 6-7.

5

Ibid.

6

Ibid.

7

Ibid., 6.

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away because he threatened to whip him. O who could paint the horrors of slavery … so hard is the natural heart.”8 Her delineation of physical pain demonstrates that Grimké is highly personally connected with the plight of slaves, or at least those that she knows.9 In addition, her lamentation that slavery is a major flaw of human nature, as suggested by her attribution of the “horrors of slavery” to “the natural heart,” places the blame for slavery upon Grimké.10 As this phrase thrusts the onus on the nature of all humans, as opposed to the misdeeds of a few, Grimké takes partial responsibility and therefore indicates that she should share the guilt. In a later interview, Grimké hints that her guilt for her family’s slaveholding status specifically compels her to speak against slavery: While I live, and slavery lives, I must testify against it … the deep yearnings of affection for the mother that bore me, who is a slaveholder, both in fact and in heart; for my brothers and sisters, (a large family circle,) and for my numerous other slaveholding kindred in South Carolina, constrain me to speak.11 Several accounts also indicate that Grimké combined these motivations with political persuasion in order to gain greater success in activism: “Grimké had become a kind of expert in guilt, and by pricking the consciences of Americans she became a powerful weapon for the anti-slavery cause.”12 During Grimké’s activism, many Americans were highly religious, and most political

8

Angelina Emily Grimké, Walking by Faith: The Diary of Angelina Grimké, ed. Charles Wilbanks (Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 2003), 37.

9

Ibid.

10

Ibid.

11

Angelina Grimké Weld, "Testimony of Angelina Grimké Weld," interview by Theodore Dwight Weld, in The American Negro: His History and Literature, ed. William Loren Katz, comp. Theodore Dwight Weld (New York: Arno Press and the New York Times, 1968), 52.

12

Lahr, "'Bowed in the Dust,'" 20.

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rhetoric was imbued with the vocabulary of morals and Christianity, so Grimké’s tactics were particularly effective.13 This guilt, combined with Grimké’s beliefs, served as another stimulus for her antislavery activism.14 Grimké believed that, under Christianity, slavery was immoral: multiple diary entries detail the ways in which enslavement and the abuse that accompanied it violated the provisions of the Bible and the values of the Christian faith.15 These tenets alone were enough to spur Grimké to act on her moral convictions, and she documents in her diary that she lived on Earth to carry out God’s mission of furthering equality and love.16 In addition to motivating her, these beliefs spilled over into Grimké’s public anti-slavery appeals, as she disputed others’ conception that Christianity permitted forced bondage.17 For instance, in a widely publicized 1837 letter, she argues with activist Catharine Beecher, who claimed that the principles of abolition negated those of Christianity: “Why, then, protest against our measures as unchristian, because they do not smooth the pillow of the poor sinner, and lull his conscience into fatal security?”18 Grimké defends her advocacies by using the language of sin to criticize slavery, invoking a sense of religious obligation to the cause. Additionally, Grimké utilized religious rhetoric to persuade audiences to support abolition. For instance, in her essay Appeal to Christian

13

Ibid.

14

Stephen Howard Browne, Angelina Grimké: Rhetoric, Identity, and the Radical Imagination (East

Lansing, MI: Michigan State University, 1999).

15

Grimké, Walking by Faith, 120.

16

Lahr, "'Bowed in the Dust,'" 10.

17

Angelina E. Grimké to Catharine Beecher, "Letter V: Christian Character of Abolitionism," July 8, 1837, accessed November 27, 2016.

18

Ibid. Primary sources such as personal letters refer to Beecher by the name Catharine, while secondary sources spell her name as Catherine.

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Women of the South, which was published in 1836 by the American Anti-Slavery Society and widely read across both the South and the North, Grimké examines every instance that slavery is decried in the Bible and applies it to Southern slavery.19 She calls upon Southern women of faith to “endure sound doctrine,” therefore urging them to act according to God’s word instead of their society’s political views.20 Stemming from Grimké’s motivations, and apart from the rhetoric that demonstrated those motivations, were her public actions. All of her public advocacies can be tied to her past because the political rhetoric and stories Grimké used related to her motivation to leave the lifestyle of plantation slave ownership. Grimké began advocating for social change within 12 months of leaving her South Carolina home for the North, and the proximity was due to her opposition to the fact that her family owned slaves.21 Her efforts began with aiding the political effort opposing Jackson’s Indian Removal Act.22 Grimké led efforts to gather signatories to an 1830 petition calling for Congress to disavow efforts at Indian Removal.23 The temporal proximity of this activism, which was radical relative to all of her previous actions (which only escalated as far as speaking in front of her town’s church), to her symbolic break from slavery demonstrates that even her earliest activism was linked to the juxtaposition of her beliefs with

19

Angelina Emily Grimké, Appeal to Christian Women of the South (New York: American Anti-Slavery Society, 1836), accessed November 27, 2016.

20

Ibid.

21

"Women in the Antebellum North," in A Companion to the Civil War and Reconstruction (Malton, MA: WileyBlackwell, 2005), accessed June 12, 2016, American History Online.

22 23

Ibid.

Memorial from the Ladies of Steubenville, Ohio, Protesting Indian Removal (Steubenville, OH, 1830), accessed December 14, 2016.

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her family’s.24 The political petitions, such as the petitions urging the government to halt removal of Native Americans, Grimké promoted speak both to Grimké’s past experiences and what would become her future advocacies against slavery and sexism. For instance, the antiRemoval petitions feature language that is humble to the point of being self-deprecating – Grimké and the other writers apologetically acknowledge that women do not belong in politics, noting, “The wise and venerated founders of our [country] … and your memorialists would sincerely deprecate any presumptuous interference on the part of their own sex, with the ordinary political affairs of the country, as wholly unbecoming the character of the American Females”.25 This submissive writing, which comes at a time when female public speech was unacceptable and all participants in politics were male, echoes the discouragements that Grimké experienced during her days in South Carolina, when her own community and church disparaged her activism.26 For instance, members of Grimké’s church as well as Quaker officials publicly condemned Grimké for speaking out against slavery, branding her conduct shameful and unwomanly.27 Conversely, the diction hints at women’s rights advocacies to come: the acknowledgement that the political sphere intentionally excluded females, mainly because male activists and officials like Grimké’s fellow churchgoers acted with hostility towards female petitioners, points out one of the main reasons that Grimké would later transition from abolitionism to women’s rights activism.28 Grimké’s rise to prominence was also inextricably

24

Grimké, Walking by Faith, 95.

25

Memorial from, 1.

26

Beret, "Abolition Movement," in American History.

27

Ibid.

28

Grimké, Walking by Faith, 5.

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linked to her motivations: a few years after leaving her family, in 1835, she wrote a letter decrying slavery that William Lloyd Garrison, arguably the most prominent abolitionist, published in the abolitionist news source The Liberator.29 Through Garrison’s vast readership, Grimké’s letter was widely distributed and read by abolitionists, which catapulted Grimké into recognition by abolitionists.30 The fact that the writing that propelled Grimké into the public sphere was chronologically near her leaving her slaveholding family, as well as linked to her family’s actions through the subject matter, makes it clear that Grimké’s personal history and motivations underpinned her public actions.

In addition, many of Grimké’s advocacies, by their very nature, began to overlap with women’s rights activism. For instance, prior to the presence of Angelina Grimké and her sister Sarah in social reform movements, female activists acted almost exclusively in women-only groups, partially because many male activists refused to listen to female speakers.31 The sisters bucked this trend: though they began by speaking to crowds composed solely of women, they quickly moved on to mixed-gender audiences, speaking in front of a mostly-male crowd at church.32 Their fight against slavery was bold and public considering the social norms of female domesticity of the time, so apart from the content of their speeches, their activism was a salient act of rebellion against expectations of women. The treatment that Grimké experienced while defying social trends of the time served as her motivation for feminist advocacy.33 In the late

29

Lahr, "'Bowed in the Dust,'" 2.

30

Ibid.

31

Ira Lee Beret, "Abolition Movement," in American History (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, Greenwood Press, Praeger, Libraries Unlimited/Linworth, 2016), accessed June 10, 2016, ABC-CLIO eBook Collection.

32

Ibid.

33

Grimké, Walking by Faith, 5.

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1820s and the earliest stages of the 1830s, before she spoke about women’s rights, religious officials at Grimké’s church in South Carolina scorned her for speaking in public against slavery, since these actions violated the acceptable role of women at the time.34 In fact, an entire congregation of ministers published a pamphlet decrying Grimké and her sister for speaking to audiences that included men.35 Opposition to her speeches was not only religious, but also political: “Charged with addressing ‘promiscuous’ audiences of both women and men, opponents attacked her as a ‘Devil-ina.’”36 Grimké began writing publicly about women’s roles in 1836, less than one year after ascending to abolitionist prominence by having her work published in The Liberator. The temporal proximity of the shift from religiously based objections to genderbased advocacies demonstrates that the former criticism catalyzed many of Grimké’s feminist assertions.37 In addition, Grimké’s defiant remarks in defense of women in politics, which she wrote to Catharine Beecher in their exchange over whether women belonged in politics, elucidate some of Grimké’s motivations.38 Beecher disparaged Grimké’s Appeal to Christian Women of the South with a combination of religious objections and criticisms founded upon her opinion of the acceptable role of women: “It seems unwise and inexpedient for ladies… to unite themselves in Abolition Societies; … your public address leads me to infer, that you are not sufficiently

34

Beret, "Abolition Movement," in American History.

35

Ibid.

36

Lahr, "'Bowed in the Dust,'" 2.

37

Ibid.

38

Ibid.

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informed in regard to … Christian females at the North.”39 Further, Beecher reinforces the expectations of traditional gender roles by delineating her hope that women would use their inevitable education in an acceptable manner: America will be distinguished … for well-educated females … But if females, as they approach the other sex, in intellectual elevation, begin to claim, or to exercise in any manner, the peculiar prerogatives of that sex, education will prove a doubtful and dangerous blessing… the more intelligent a woman becomes, the more she can appreciate the wisdom of that ordinance that appointed her subordinate station, and the more her taste will conform to the graceful and dignified retirement and submission it involves.40 Grimké took issue with Beecher’s characterization of the natural state of women, since she disagreed that women should remain docile and unintelligent, and her series of replies displays her most prominent motivations for women’s rights advocacies. For instance, she writes to Beecher, “Woman's rights are not the gifts of man—no! nor the gifts of God. … her rights are an integral part of her moral being …Her rights lie at the foundation of all her duties.”41 By denoting that women’s rights underlie all tasks she is obliged to complete, Grimké invokes a tone of moral necessity, indicating that her belief in women’s rights drives her to activism.

Grimké’s public rhetoric and actions also clearly show her motivations. For example, as the historian Angela Lahr remarked in an analysis of all of Grimké’s speeches, “Grimké commonly drew on gender-tinted guilt, combining rhetorical shame with accepted notions of gender roles. Women were victims of slavery, Grimké argued. Slave women were obvious

39

Catharine E. Beecher to A. D. Grimké, "Essay on Slavery and Abolitionism," 1837, accessed November 27, 2016.

40

Beecher to Grimké, "Essay on Slavery."

41

Angelina E. Grimké to Catharine Beecher, "Letter XI: The Sphere of Woman and Man as Moral Beings the Same," August 28, 1837, accessed November 27, 2016.

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victims.”42 Grimké asserted that “women were victims of slavery” because she argued that the subjugation entailed by slavery made discriminatory sexism more acceptable, since the two processes were similar in the hate and domination they involved. Grimké’s use of allusions to gender roles and her likening of sexism to slavery to convince women to oppose forced bondage demonstrate Grimké’s disillusionment with women’s social status in political circles. Her acknowledgement of the overlap between slavery and sexism hearkens back to Grimké’s own motivations, because her knowledge that comparing gendered and racial discrimination would appeal to women suggests that she shares similar sentiments. Along the same lines, her acknowledgement that slave women experienced acute subjugation reveals an awareness of dual identities that Grimké likely learned through her political pursuits, demonstrating that Grimké’s previous advocacies influenced her venture into feminism. Years later, Grimké’s presence at the 1850 Worcester Convention on women’s rights in Massachusetts reinforced Grimké’s dedication to eradicating sexist discrimination.43 At the convention, Grimké joined other activists in cementing women’s suffrage goals into the public sphere, passing resolutions that demanded equal rights for women in the workplace, education, and other public arenas.44 Much of the media coverage of the event criticized the women’s rights movement by harnessing racial prejudice: the New York Herald scoffed that the convention was illegitimate because it alleged “fugitive slaves” were in attendance.45 The use of a type of prejudice that Grimké had historically opposed to reinforce a prejudice against women, which Grimké was battling at the

42

Lahr, "'Bowed in the Dust,'" 21.

43

"Worcester Convention," in American History (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, Greenwood Press, Praeger, Libraries Unlimited/Linworth, 2016), 1, accessed June 10, 2016, ABC-CLIO eBook Collection.

44

Ibid.

45

"Worcester Convention,” 1.

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time, serves as evidence that Grimké’s dual advocacies were immutably linked in the public perception.

Sojourner Truth The bulk of Sojourner Truth’s abolitionist advocacies were based upon her own experience with slavery: specifically, the fact that she spent her life, from her late eighteenthcentury birth until 1826, as a slave in New York.46 Sold on the auction block as well as changing hands twice more, Truth experienced being treated as property, while also undergoing abuse in the form of beatings.47 Truth also experienced severe injury while laboring in the fields, and the extent of her injury evoked a sense of disdain for slavery from those she encountered during her activism. For example, when Truth was selling photographs and pamphlets about her life to raise money for her political travels, an image of Truth’s scars gained her the support of a free black woman.48 The woman remarked that she was glad that she was black so that she did not have to enslave other people.49 Truth began speaking out against slavery after she fled from bondage in mid-1826.50 After spending a brief period at a Massachusetts religious commune, she ventured northward and began publicly speaking about her experiences and disputing the institution of slavery as early as the end of 1826.51 Though Truth’s speeches became her most well known

46

"Sojourner Truth," in World of Sociology. Truth’s birth date was never recorded, since she was born into slavery.

However, sources as well as Truth herself estimate her birth year to be around 1797.

47

Ibid.

48

Eve M. Kahn, "The Stories behind Two Famous Faces in American History," The New York Times (New York, NY), September 25, 2015, accessed June 12, 2016, Biography in Context.

49

Ibid.

50

Harris, "Finding Sojourner's," 326.

51

William McGuire and Leslie Wheeler, "Sojourner Truth," in American History (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, Greenwood Press, Praeger, Libraries Unlimited/Linworth, 2016), accessed June 12, 2016, ABC-CLIO eBook Collection.

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venues of activism, Truth’s involvement in court cases as well as her autobiography enhanced her role as an anti-slavery public figure.52 Truth initially disputed slavery through the court system: she first went to court to demand that her son, Peter, be freed.53 In late 1826, after the passage of New York’s 1817 law ordering that all underage slaves be freed at the age of 21, Peter’s owner had illegally sold him out of state in an attempt to evade the legislation and maximize profit.54 Truth’s first lawsuit, which she her lawyer filed in either late 1826 or early 1827, succeeded in bringing Peter and his new owner back to New York to face charges, but did not free Peter.55 Undeterred, Truth and another lawyer went to court a second time, in 1827, to fight for Peter’s release.56 Though Peter, who was either five or six years old and demonstrated obvious fear of his owner in court, denied that he knew Truth and claimed that his scars did not stem from beatings, the second court appearance succeeded in returning Peter to his mother’s care.57 Shortly after her court appearances, Truth began the project of writing her autobiography by telling stories regarding her experience in slavery to a close friend, Olive Gilbert, who transcribed those stories.58 Gilbert was a Caucasian friend who Truth had met at the

52

"Sojourner Truth," in World of Sociology.

53

Harris, "Finding Sojourner's," 326.

54

Ibid.

55

Ibid., 327.

56

Ibid.

57 58

Harris, "Finding Sojourner's," 326.

Sojourner Truth, Narrative of Sojourner Truth, ed. Margaret Washington (New York: Vintage Classics, 1993), xi, originally published as Narrative of Sojourner Truth, a Northern Slave, Emancipated from Bodily Servitude by the State of New York, in 1828, with a Portrait (Boston: J.B. Yerrington and Son, Printers, 1850). Olive Gilbert was unnamed in publication, but secondary sources establish that she acted as a proxy for Truth, because Truth was

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Massachusetts religious commune where they had both spent time.59 Gilbert spent two years in Kentucky living on a slave plantation to observe the realities of slavery, but as she was not black, she never directly experienced slavery.60 Current interpretations of proxy-writer or ghost writer relationships assume too high a level of Gilbert’s faithfulness to Truth’s narrative, which implicates the accuracy of some of the autobiography’s content. For instance, Gilbert’s transcription of Truth’s autobiography, which was published under the title Narrative of Sojourner Truth, a Northern Slave, Emancipated from Bodily Servitude by the State of New York, in 1828, with a Portrait, excluded much of what Truth discussed regarding her female identity and her embrace of her sexuality.61 However, many of Truth’s specific experiences with slavery were accurately transcribed, published, and circulated through the autobiography.62 Even before Truth became a formal and well-known member of the abolitionist movement, she used her personal experiences as well as the forums to which she had access to oppose the institution of slavery.63 Truth’s salient personal experiences indicate that her time as a slave served as a significant motivator for her abolitionist efforts.

The rhetoric Truth uses further delineates her personal motivation for abolitionist advocacies. According to historian John Ernest, Truth was initially reluctant to discuss specific

illiterate.

59

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, ed., "Sojourner Truth, D. 1883 and Olive Gilbert," Documenting the American South, last modified 2004, accessed April 5, 2017.

60

Ibid.

61

John Ernest, "The Floating Icon and the Fluid Text: Ernest Rereading the Narrative of Sojourner Truth," American Literature 78, no. 3 (September 2006): 460, accessed September 17, 2016, EBSCOhost Academic Search Complete.

62

Truth, Narrative of Sojourner, xxix.

63

Ibid., 464.

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experiences, and she never published detailed accounts of the abuse she endured because she worried about being called a liar, and wanted to preserve her persuasiveness and credibility.64 Eventually, though, Truth concluded that a balance between a genuine rhetoric of pain and a restraint from adding excessive detail would enhance her credibility the most.65 Truth’s autobiography is written in the third person, which establishes an authoritative voice that is both universal in its applicability to anyone and persuasive in its assertion of facts.66 However, the language Truth uses reveals her motivations as well as persuading readers. Early in her autobiography, Truth writes, “A slave auction is a terrible affair to its victims, and its incidents and consequences are graven on their hearts as with a pen of burning steel.”67 This passage reinforces her determination to end slavery: Truth focuses on a very small aspect of slavery, an action, and uses pointedly negative language such as “terrible” and “victims” to describe it.

Further, though, she utilizes vocabulary that evokes a sense of the personal: by talking about slaves’ “hearts” and describing the pain associated with auctions as “burning steel,” Truth employs rich language that hints she is intimately familiar with the experience of slavery. Even in the absence of a first-person narrative, Sojourner Truth is able to evoke a sense of universality by intimately describing pain in a way that relates to many readers but also indicates that the pain was Truth’s own. Truth’s autobiographical rhetoric reveals that her motivation for abolitionist advocacy was first and foremost rooted in her own early life.

64

Truth, Narrative of Sojourner, 64.

65

Truth, Narrative of Sojourner, 64.

66

Ibid., 10.

67

Ibid., 14.

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Similarly, Sojourner Truth’s public advocacies for women’s rights stemmed from her own experience, both inside and outside of slavery. While Truth was enslaved, she experienced unique oppression resulting from her identity both as a slave and as a woman.68 Truth was one of the people most oppressed by the racial patriarchy, the idea that, as one historian writes, “slavery as a regime of property reflected and reinforced the social relations of race and gender.”69 She, like many other female slaves, experienced a double subjugation and stereotyping due to being considered by society an inferior race as well as an inferior gender.70 For instance, scholars such as Cheryl I. Harris discuss the experience of female slaves in terms of “racial and sexual domination”: this constituted the way in which female slaves were expected to submit not only to the labor demands of their white owners, but also to submit sexually.71 These two forms of oppression were not separate: rather, both abuses were intertwined with slave women’s identities.72 Slave women such as Truth also endured a complex combination of societal expectations: Harris writes, “Black women were portrayed … as dominant, aggressive, and, except for the matriarchal figure, Mammy, sexually promiscuous.”73 Further, society alienated slave women from their female identity: black women, as stated above, were constantly

68

Harris, "Finding Sojourner's," 312.

69

Ibid.

70

Ibid.

71

Ibid., 313.

72

Ibid.

73

Ibid., 313., Jennifer Kowalski, "Stereotypes of History: Reconstructing Truth and the Black Mammy," Transcending Silence, Spring 2009, accessed April 5, 2017. Mammy, as identified in this source, is a racialized archetype of a black woman. A “Mammy” denotes a sexually unattractive slave woman whose role is to care for her master’s children by supervising them and feeding them from her own breasts. A Mammy is typically forced to ignore her own children in favor of her master’s white children.

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sexualized, while laborers were considered dirty.74 The societally constructed imagery of impurity separated female slaves from the possibility of achieving the status of an ideal woman, which included images of purity denoted by whiteness. Truth and other slave women experienced a pervasive combination of racial and gendered oppression, which suggests that Truth’s advocacies against slavery and sexism were based on the intensity of her own experiences. The fact that the racial and gendered oppression she endured were so interlocked suggests that both of her advocacies were likely closely connected to one another.

Aside from her early experiences in bondage, Truth experienced other events that shaped her advocacy’s trajectory towards women’s rights. For instance, her experience at a religious and moral reform gathering in Northampton motivated much of her action. When she was speaking at the political gathering, a mob of men armed with torches approached the podium and threatened to burn down the tent in which Truth was speaking.75 Truth recalled that the aggressors made comments regarding her race as well as suggesting that women should not speak in public.76 She felt that her identity would incur their wrath, writing in her autobiography, “I am the only colored person here, and on me, probably, their wicked mischief will fall first, and perhaps fatally.”77 The nature of the men’s comments about Truth’s gender, in combination with the manner in which Truth associated her racial identity with a sense of danger, suggests that Truth’s perception of her own identity tied closely to the forces that catalyzed her abolitionist and feminist action.

74

Truth, Narrative of Sojourner, xxx.

75

Truth, Narrative of Sojourner, 93.

76

Ibid.

77

Ibid.

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The rhetoric that Truth used in her women’s rights advocacies also reveals aspects of her motivations. For instance, in her “Ar’n’t I a Woman” speech, delivered at an 1851 women’s rights convention in Akron, Ohio, Truth argued that her blackness did not preclude her womanhood.78 She asserted the compatibility of her slave labor with her femininity, and a transcript of her speech published years later records that she said, “I have ploughed, and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me! And ain't I a woman? I could work as much and eat as much as a man … and bear de lash as well! And ain’t I a woman?”79 She also voices her knowledge of a inherent contradiction of her identities: she notes that even the social institutions that usually respect women, such as the tradition of assisting a woman in boarding a carriage, are not afforded to her because she is black.80 The manner in which Truth boldly asserts and acknowledges her racial and her sexual identities while speaking at a women’s rights convention suggests that she believed both her identities to be relevant to the quest for woman’s equality. The presence of this belief further reinforces the idea that Truth’s personal history undergirded all of her political advocacies, since her identity was so deeply embedded in her convictions.

Further, Truth uses the traditionally abolitionist rhetoric of moral necessity in her “Ar’n’t I a Woman” speech for women’s rights. For instance, she rationalizes public acceptance of gender equality with a Christian effort to humanize women, arguing that Christ was borne from

78

"Proceedings of the Women's Convention," The Anti-Slavery Bugle (New-Lisbon, OH), June 21, 1851, 158-159, accessed November 28, 2016.

79

Sojourner Truth, "Ar'n't I a Woman," speech, May 28, 1851, in History of Woman Suffrage, ed. Susan B. Anthony, comp. Frances Gage (Rochester, NY: Charles Mann, 1887), 1, accessed November 28, 2016., "Proceedings of the Women's," 158. Records such as the local newspaper transcript published the day after the speech, however, indicate that Truth actually said “ar’n’t I a woman,” not “ain’t I a woman.”

80

Truth, "Ar'n't I a Woman," speech, in History of Woman, 1.

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the body of a woman.81 She also uses religious wording in combination with discussing her gender and racial roles: “I have borne thirteen chilern, and seen 'em mos' all sold off to slavery, and when I cried out with my mother's grief, none but Jesus heard me!”82 Her assertion that the institution of slavery complicated her role as a mother, and that Jesus need intervene, demonstrates a relationship between both advocacies and religious rhetoric in Truth’s mind. The overlap of revolutionary tactics suggests that Truth associates the women’s rights movement and abolitionism as two interlocked movements that are similar enough that the same persuasion can be effective for both. Truth holds similar ideas about the relationship between racial and gender identities: she combines race and gender in her own thoughts, viewing the two as one identity, and she expresses her intersectional viewpoint in her public advocacies.

Truth uses similar intersectional rhetoric in her 1853 “What Time of Night It Is” speech.

For instance, she begins her remarks by conceding that her social position, particularly her race and her gender, are antithetical to public speaking.83 She states, I know that it feels a kind o' hissin' and ticklin' like to see a colored woman get up and tell you about things, and Woman's Rights. We have all been thrown down so low that nobody thought we'd ever get up again; but …we will come up again, and now I am here.84 She simultaneously concedes and defends her identities, following her initial caveat with “now I

81

Truth, "Ar'n't I a Woman," speech, in History of Woman, 1.

82

Truth, "Ar'n't I a Woman," speech, in History of Woman, 1.

83

Sojourner Truth, "What Time of Night It Is," speech, 1853, accessed September 17, 2016, Annals of American History Online.

84

Ibid.

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am here,” which indicates a pride in her social position.85 The manner in which Truth explicitly links her blackness and her womanhood with women’s rights in the early lines of her speech reveals that she directly associates identity and advocacy, meaning that her background likely exacted heavy influence upon her actions within the sphere of women’s rights activism. In addition, the phrase “come up again,” which Truth repeats twice throughout “What Time of Night it Is,” further delineates Truth’s motivations.86 Her use of the collective “we” in combination with reference to past oppression — “come up” implying a sense of being previously subjugated and “again” denoting past occurrences — suggests that her identity brings kinship to her audience as well as motivating the fierce rhetoric of her speech.87 “Come up again” is augmented by similar phrases such as “come forth,” “come up,” and “come forward.”88 Truth employs these alternative phrases in an additional seven instances.

Truth also utilizes religious rhetoric in “What Time of Night it Is”, as she does in her “Ar’n’t I a Woman” speech, relaying that in the Bible, Esther asked for human rights but was instead given half of the kingdom of Earth.89 Now, Truth asserts, when women request simple human rights, they are scoffed at as though they are demanding half of the kingdom of Earth.90 Additionally, Truth combines biblical rhetoric of the sinful snake in the Garden of Eden with a scathing condemnation of the way in which sexism divides the family unit: “Now, women do not

85

Truth, "What Time," speech.

86

Ibid.

87

Ibid.

88

Ibid.

89

Ibid.

90

Ibid.

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ask half of a kingdom, but their rights, and they don't get ‘em. When she comes to demand 'em, don't you hear how sons hiss their mothers like snakes, because they ask for their rights; and can they ask for anything less?”91 By framing the debate over women’s rights in biblical and moral terms, Truth increases the efficacy of her criticism. As per the analysis above, association of religious language with Truth’s voicing of identity demonstrates that her personal background impacted her political forays.

Sojourner Truth’s advocacies for women’s rights and for abolition, unlike Angelina Grimké’s, were always intertwined. Because Truth injected the narrative of her experiences into all of her political actions, and because there is no way to separate her racial subjugation and gendered subjugation, the overlap between Sojourner Truth’s feminist and abolitionist advocacies is not only inherent, but also inevitable.

Intersection Sojourner Truth’s and Angelina Grimké’s advocacies were relatively indicative of the interaction between the abolition and women’s rights movements as a whole, both in their motivations and in their methods. For instance, both activists’ grounding in their personal backgrounds reflected the motivations of most of the grassroots movements opposed to slavery and sexism. As Angela Lahr writes, “Grimké’s conscience-directed life in many ways places her soundly within the nineteenth-century American cultural context and it certainly reflects an important aspect of abolition culture.”92 As Grimké’s sense of personal guilt parallels Truth’s evocation of guilt via her relation of her own experiences, Truth’s activism also falls into place with the contemporary trends. Much of the women’s rights movement’s momentum stemmed

91

Truth, "What Time," speech.

92

Lahr, "'Bowed in the Dust,'" 3.

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from its members’ own experiences with oppression, and Grimké’s and Truth’s activist motivations blossomed from similar origins.93 For example, both encountered sexism while advocating abolition, as Grimké underwent widespread scorn from her church, community, and audiences for speaking in public.94 Similarly, Truth endured sexist attitudes while railing against slavery, as she was denied the right to own property while on her political tours due to her gender, meaning that she could not buy or rent any housing accommodations.95 Truth also faced a hostile attitude from audiences rife with male spectators unaccustomed to female speakers.96 Several women’s rights activists were spurred to political activity by instances of discrimination, such as being denied the right to vote or to buy property while their husbands enjoyed these privileges.97 Truth’s and Grimké’s encounters with gendered expectation and discrimination while fighting to abolish slavery contributed to the overall historical trend of activists of the time being motivated by their own experiences with discrimination.

In addition, both women’s activist trajectories aligned with the general political tendencies of the period: both women’s abolitionist origins paved the way for their exploration of feminist politics.98 Historically, abolition served as a precursor for the prevalence of feminism in the public sphere, and as one scholar wrote: “The surge of abolitionist activity in the 1830’s served as the catalyst which transformed latent feminist sentiment into the beginnings of an

93

Blanche Glassman Hersh, The Slavery of Sex: Feminist-Abolitionists in America (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1978), 1.

94

Beret, "Abolition Movement," in American History.

95

Harris, "Finding Sojourner's," 321.

96

Ibid.

97

Hersh, The Slavery, 1.

98

Hersh, The Slavery, 1.

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organized movement.”99 Truth and Grimké directly contributed to this phenomenon and reflected its momentum in their political trajectories. The very presence of female abolitionists such as Truth and Grimké in the public sphere begged the question of women’s proper places and women’s rights.100 Grimké’s activism rests at the heart of this trend, as her presence and experiences in the anti-slavery movement were one of the first inspirations for organized feminism.101 Truth’s advocacies and experiences also support this historical trend, as she acted as a public figure, speaking at the forefront of both movements.102 Truth’s public legal challenges to her son’s slave status occurred in 1827, six years ahead of the establishment of the American Anti-Slavery Society in 1833.103 Truth also rose to prominence before her abolitionist and feminist contemporaries did, giving her famed “Ar’n’t I a Woman” speech in 1851, a year before abolitionist milestones such as the publication of Uncle Tom’s Cabin and nine years before Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s hallmark 1860 speech “The Natural Rights of Civilized Women.”104 In addition, the activities of Truth and Grimké represent the overall ideological interaction between anti-slavery politics and feminist activism. For example, some of the earliest women’s rights campaigns used the language of slavery in order to liken the effects of slavery

99

Ibid., Gail Collins, "Women and Abolition: White and Black, North and South," in America's Women: 400 Years of Dolls, Drudges, Helpmates, and Heroines (New York, NY: HarperCollins, 2003).

100

Hersh, The Slavery, 7.

101

Ibid., 17.

102

Harris, "Finding Sojourner's," 311.

103

"Timeline of the Abolitionist Movement," Gilder Lehrman, last modified 2012, accessed April 5, 2017.

104

Ibid., Elizabeth Cady Stanton, "The Natural Rights of Civilized Women," in The Crisis of the Union, ed.

William Benton, vol. 9, The Annals of America (Chicago, IL: Encyclopedia Britannica, 1968), 9:151.

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and gendered oppression.105 In 1860, Elizabeth Cady Stanton presented “The Natural Rights of Civilized Women” in her address to the legislature of the state of New York.106 The speech makes comparative claims between slavery and sexism in order to bolster its points.107 Stanton argues that slavery was no worse than womanhood, not to delegitimize the struggles of slaves but instead to support her point of female rights’ necessity.108 She asserts, “In cruelty and tyranny [womanhood is] not surpassed by any slaveholding code.”109 She further ties the two movements together by explaining the similarities of their struggles, arguing, The prejudice against color, of which we hear so much, is no stronger than that against sex. It is produced by the same cause and manifested very much in the same way. The Negro’s skin and the woman’s sex are both prima facie evidence that they were intended to be in subjection to the white Saxon man.110 Stanton’s New York address represents the political tides of her time, since its purpose was to urge the passage of a women’s rights bill that was already awaiting votes in the state.111 However, the feminist movement did not solely initiate the integration of the two movements.

Female abolitionists “moved surely and inevitably toward the realization that human

105

Stanton, "The Natural," in The Crisis, 9:151.

106

Ibid.

107

Ibid., 152.

108

Ibid.

109

Ibid.

110

Stanton, "The Natural," in The Crisis, 9:152.

111

Stanton, "The Natural," in The Crisis, 9:152.

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enslavement took many forms.”112 Grimké’s and Truth’s advocacies reflected the emerging belief that slavery and sexism were interlocked: Grimké compared the two in her journal writings and in several letters to her husband, arguing that much of the alienation she experienced due to her sex while speaking in public linked directly to the oppression experienced by slaves.113 Along the same vein, Truth also often discussed the similarities of her two types of oppression, as she explicitly asserts in “Ar’n’t I a Woman” that her slave labor was integral to her own identity as a woman.114 Overall, the manner in which the two women related sexism and racism represented the political momentum of the time as it related to abolitionism and women’s rights.

Further, Grimké and Truth reflected the interaction of the two movements because of the specific tactics they used. In general, abolitionists’ rhetorical tactics inspired feminists. For instance, both groups used the message of equality and the appeal to American values presented in the Declaration of Independence to justify ending slavery and increasing women’s rights.115 Because abolitionists first used this language but feminists soon adopted it, historians such as Blanche Glassman Hersh speculate that the tactic spilled over from the black rights movement to the women’s rights political groups.116 Sojourner Truth’s specific strategies for women’s rights, as discussed above, stemmed from her abolitionist origins.117 Her heavy use of biblical allusions, such as comparing women’s plight to that of Queen Esther in her women’s rights speeches

112

Hersh, The Slavery, 6.

113

Ceplair, The Public.

114

Truth, "Ar'n't I a Woman," speech, in History of Woman, 1:116.

115

Hersh, The Slavery, 194.

116

Hersh, The Slavery, 194.

117

Truth, "What Time," speech.

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reflects the well-documented abolitionist reliance on religious references.118 The combination of Truth’s references to her own identity with the language of moral necessity, which she used heavily in feminist speeches such as “What Time of Night It Is,” parallels the way in which abolitionists such as William Lloyd Garrison and Harriet Beecher Stowe combined accounts of personal suffering with ethically-based urgings to eliminate slavery.119 Grimké, too, used these abolition tactics in her women’s rights activism, utilizing biblical language and examining all the ways in which the Bible prohibited slavery, to invoke the collective conscience of society in her public letters.120 Analysis of issues such as each woman’s personal identities indicates that although their activism shared many proximate causes such as moral beliefs and experiences with sexism during abolition activism, the specific position of each woman’s identity indicates that the root causes of their motivations, their individual backgrounds, differed dramatically. Grimké’s past status as a slave-owner and Truth’s history as a slave, though opposite, acted along with the factors of morality and experiences in politics to motivate both women to combine their advocacies. The tactics and justifications both women used, as well as the general momentum in which they expanded their abolitionist politics to argue for women’s rights, speak to the historical trends experienced by the two movements. Overall, Truth’s and Grimké’s motivations and actions served to represent the intersection between women’s rights activism and abolitionism.

118

Ibid.

119

Truth, "Ar'n't I a Woman," speech, in History of Woman, 1:116., Lahr, "'Bowed in the Dust,'" 2., Ernest, "The Floating," 462.

120

Grimké to Beecher, "Letter XI: The Sphere.", Grimké to Beecher, "Letter XII."

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Bibliography The Anti-Slavery Bugle (New-Lisbon, OH). "Proceedings of the Women's Convention." June 21, 1851, 158-59. Accessed November 28, 2016. http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83035487/1851-06-21/ed-1/seq-2/.

Beecher, Catharine E. Letter to A. D. Grimké, "Essay on Slavery and Abolitionism," 1837.

Accessed November 27, 2016. http://utc.iath.virginia.edu/abolitn/abesceba2t.html.

Beret, Ira Lee. "Abolition Movement." In American History. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, Greenwood Press, Praeger, Libraries Unlimited/Linworth, 2016. Accessed June 10, 2016.

ABC-CLIO eBook Collection.

Browne, Stephen Howard. Angelina Grimké: Rhetoric, Identity, and the Radical Imagination.

East Lansing, MI: Michigan State University, 1999.

This biography of Angeline Grimké discusses her political activism and varied political concerns such as that of abolition. The biography argues that Grimké’s life should be depicted through the lens of rebellion and contradiction, asserting that she formed her identity through the opposition of all of the portions of her life that were comfortable to her, such as her family’s support of slavery. The work also argues that her identity was built upon all of these rejections, and describes her contributions to politics in terms of her rejection of racism, patriarchy, and the like. This source is cited in multiple other articles’ reference sections, which contributed to its selection for this paper. In addition, this work focuses on the causes and interactions that made up Grimké’s actions in the political sphere, as well as the implications that those actions had for society and for activists to come. Stephen Howarde Browne, the author, is a professor at Pennsylvania State University, where he instructs graduate seminars focusing on rhetoric, memory of this, and its criticism, as well as undergraduate courses. His research specializes in public perception of rhetoric and the social movements of the early United States. He received a doctorate decree from the University of Wisconsin, and has received a multitude of teaching accolades. Browne’s extremely specific focus on the impact of rhetoric in the history makes him uniquely qualified to evaluate Grimké’s career and impact as an orator. This source brings a more political than biographical focus to this paper’s depiction of Grimké, and makes arguments about the impact of her public speeches that are rooted in research and expertise. No other work offers these conclusions, and instead requires extensive and subjective analysis, so this unique viewpoint is especially valuable.

Ceplair, Larry, ed. The Public Years of Sarah and Angelina Grimké: Selected Writings. New York: Columbia University Press, 1989.

Collins, Gail. "Women and Abolition: White and Black, North and South." In America's Women: 400 Years of Dolls, Drudges, Helpmates, and Heroines, 161-87. New York, NY: HarperCollins, 2003.

The "Women and Abolition" section of this book summarizes the motivations, such as Christian morals, behind female abolitionists’ activism and details the lives and political

Wancewicz 28

activities of multiple anti-slavery women. In this section, Collins argues that specific women were motivated by a multitude of different factors and didn't always intend their activism to be symbolic, but that the abolitionist movement as a whole represented a transformation in women's roles in politics. This book provides context for the significance of women in the anti-slavery movement, as the work depicts the women's activism as monumental not only in the pre-Civil War era, but also in the entirety of women's history in America. In addition, the work's author, Gail Collins, is highly credentialed: she has been writing about American history, society, and politics since 1972, publishing five books on a variety of subjects related to American history and working extensively with the New York Times since 1995. Collins's experience with and research on American history as a whole, not just women in abolitionism, allows her to write on the subject with a broad viewpoint, so she can accurately gage the strengths and importance of particular events. This section of the book provides a fairly shallow analysis of Angelina Grimké's and Sojourner Truth's political actions and motivations, but by situating them in the broader scene of women's history in the United States, the work provides an analysis with a comprehensive historical perspective.

Ernest, John. "The Floating Icon and the Fluid Text: Ernest Rereading the Narrative of Sojourner Truth." American Literature 78, no. 3 (September 2006). Accessed September 17, 2016.

EBSCOhost Academic Search Complete.

Ernest’s analysis of Truth’s autobiography, The Narrative of Sojourner Truth, argues that the autobiography cannot be taken as an absolutely accurate narrative of Truth’s life and activism, for two reasons. First, the collaboration with Olive Gilbert began before Truth because active in abolitionism or women’s rights. Second, Truth’s narrative is filtered through the words and analysis of Olive Gilbert, who led a life of a housewife and was white. Regardless of intentions, this means that the writing of the narrative comes from a distinctly different viewpoint than Truth’s. The author, John Ernest, has a PhD in English and has published 12 books on the subject of literary analysis. All of his books focus on the literature of African-American history and slave narratives, as well as evaluating the accuracy and meaning of these works. Ernest’s specialization in analysis of literary works exactly like Truth’s autobiography makes him qualified to comment on the viewpoint from which her work was written and its impact on the advocacy presented. This work contributed to the critical analysis of the sources used when assessing Truth’s motivation.

This caused the consideration of multiple primary sources because recognizing the nuances of sources means recognizing that no source can be perfectly accurate, and biases must be considered in analysis. It also added the consideration that Truth’s speeches may be a more accurate representation of her motivations because, though transcriptions may be inaccurate, the words spoken came directly from Truth and were not filtered through a person of another identity.

Grimké, Angelina E. Letter to Catharine Beecher, "Letter V: Christian Character of Abolitionism," July 8, 1837. Accessed November 27, 2016. http://utc.iath.virginia.edu/abolitn/abesaegb1t.html.

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———. Letter to Catharine Beecher, "Letter XII: Human Rights Not Founded on Sex," October 2, 1837. Accessed November 27, 2016. http://utc.iath.virginia.edu/abolitn/abesaegb5t.html.

———. Letter to Catharine Beecher, "Letter XI: The Sphere of Woman and Man as Moral Beings the Same," August 28, 1837. Accessed November 27, 2016. http://utc.iath.virginia.edu/abolitn/abesaegb4t.html.

Grimké, Angelina Emily. Appeal to Christian Women of the South. New York: American AntiSlavery Society, 1836. Accessed November 27, 2016. http://utc.iath.virginia.edu/abolitn/abesaegat.html.

———. Walking by Faith: The Diary of Angelina Grimké. Edited by Charles Wilbanks.

Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 2003.

Harris, Cheryl I. "Finding Sojourner's Truth: Race, Gender, and the Institution of Property."

Cardozo Law Review 18, no. 2 (November 1996): 309-410. Accessed June 15, 2016.

HeinOnline.

This law review argues that Sojourner Truth’s life trajectory, value system, and political orations were influenced by the unique oppression she experienced early in her life, as a dual form of property (a woman and a slave) and the later discrimination she experienced as a black woman in the political arena. The article also asserts that Truth was considered the paragon of intersectionality, and most likely the first major activist associated with intersectionality, partially because she insisted on being called a woman with her “Ar’n’t I a Woman” speech. Her insistence on her own womanhood and humanity contradicted all that society dictated to her about women and slaves being property, not people, which shaped not only her outlook on life but also her political stances and the movements in which she was later involved. This source addresses directly some of the core tenets of this paper, including the motivations behind Sojourner Truth’s shift in activism from abolitionism to both abolition and the women’s suffrage movement, which makes it an important element of this paper. The author, Cheryl I. Harris, is a UCLA Civil Rights and Civil Liberties professor and she has multiple published works and law reviews in the areas of race, gender, and property and ownership. Harris also writes extensively on the intersection between two or more of these areas. This makes her an especially qualified source for this topic because she is very familiar with Truth’s oppression in all senses, and she has written extensively about reactions to and movements against this discrimination. Her vast knowledge on the topic makes her application of her studies to Truth very credible and her identification of Truth as the first figure in this field extremely significant. This article both broadens and narrows, in some sense, the scope of this paper that pertains to Sojourner Truth. It isolates the specific factors and elements of identity that motivated Truth, while also broadening the scope of research from just Truth’s experiences in the abolition movement to the other variables that influenced her political choices. Both are important aspects to consider when evaluating Truth’s motivations, which helped shape the trajectory of the paper.

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Hersh, Blanche Glassman. The Slavery of Sex: Feminist-Abolitionists in America. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1978.

The relevant section of this book discusses the overall trends of the abolition movement and the feminist movement, and how they converged. It notes that public attention to abolition effectively caused the women’s rights movement to come into the light because 1) women began to be involved in politics for the first time which begged the question of women’s rights and 2) tactics used against slavery began to be used against sexist oppression as well. Blanche Glassman Hersh taught and studied Women’s Studies and history. Her presence in the intersection of these two subjects makes her uniquely qualified to evaluate the significance of feminist-abolitionists in history. Her experience also allows her to speak about how actors such as Angelina Grimké, while fighting for abolition, influenced not only her contemporaries but also current activists in the battle for gender equality. This contributes to the paper by supporting the part of the thesis statement that states that Angelina Grimké’s and Sojourner Truth’s paths of activism were representative of the movements as the whole. Specifically, the details that abolition catalyzed women’s rights, and the fact that abolition tactics were used to gain leverage for women’s suffrage, support this.

Kahn, Eve M. "The Stories behind Two Famous Faces in American History." The New York Times (New York, NY), September 25, 2015. Accessed June 12, 2016. Biography in Context.

Kowalski, Jennifer. "Stereotypes of History: Reconstructing Truth and the Black Mammy."

Transcending Silence, Spring 2009. Accessed April 5, 2017. http://www.albany.edu/womensstudies/journal/2009/kowalski/kowalski.html.

This article defines the racial and gendered archetype of the black "Mammy." The article notes that its definition of "Mammy" is an enslaved woman without sexual appeal whose role is to care for her master's white children, and not her own. Jennifer Kowalski is a published and peer-reviewed author on the rhetoric used to refer to slave women and black women, which qualifies her to comment on this matter. This definition of "Mammy" provides explanation and context for the Cheryl Harris's quotes about societal expectations. This definition will be included in an explanatory footnote.

Lahr, Angela. "'Bowed in the Dust': Guilt and Conscience in the Life of Angelina Grimké Weld."

The Historian 77, no. 1 (Spring 2015): 1-25. Accessed September 17, 2016. EBSCOhost Explora.

Angela Lahr’s analysis of the life, writings, and activism of Angelina Grimké asserts that primary-source analysis reveals that much of her action, as well as the oratory tools she utilized, were motivated by guilt. She notes that Grimké’s guilt for her complicity in slavery, which was well documented in her diary, was a primary motivator of her abolitionist advocacies. In addition, Grimké’s orations appealed to moral necessity and people’s guilt in order to convince them to support the abolitionist cause. Lahr also notes that much of the criticism directed towards Grimké when she was an abolitionist advocate was both gendered and religious in nature. Angela Lahr researches the history of religion in the United States, which qualifies her to analyze the use of religion in Grimké’s diary and speeches, and to recognize the types of religious rhetoric that pertain

Wancewicz 31

to guilt. This analysis provides specific insight into the motivations of the anti-slavery advocacies of Angelina Grimké through expert analysis of the religious convictions of her speeches and writings. The insight provided directly answers the question of Grimké’s motivation for abolitionist advocacy, as well as suggesting that sexism and religious rhetoric most likely drove Grimké to expand her advocacy to women’s rights.

McGuire, William, and Leslie Wheeler. "Sojourner Truth." In American History. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, Greenwood Press, Praeger, Libraries Unlimited/Linworth, 2016.

Accessed June 12, 2016. ABC-CLIO eBook Collection.

"Sojourner Truth." In World of Sociology. Farmington Hills, MI: Gale, 2001. Accessed June 12, 2016. Biography in Context.

Stanton, Elizabeth Cady. "The Natural Rights of Civilized Women." In The Crisis of the Union, edited by William Benton, 151-56. Vol. 9 of The Annals of America. Chicago, IL: Encyclopedia Britannica, 1968.

"Timeline of the Abolitionist Movement." Gilder Lehrman. Last modified 2012. Accessed April 5, 2017. https://www.gilderlehrman.org/sites/default/files/inlinepdfs/Timeline%20of%20the%20Abolitionist%20Movement.pdf.

Truth, Sojourner. "Ar'n't I a Woman." Speech, May 28, 1851. In History of Woman Suffrage, edited by Susan B. Anthony, 116. Compiled by Frances Gage. Vol. 1. Rochester, NY: Charles Mann, 1887. Accessed November 28, 2016.

———. Narrative of Sojourner Truth. Edited by Margaret Washington. New York: Vintage Classics, 1993. Originally published as Narrative of Sojourner Truth, a Northern Slave, Emancipated from Bodily Servitude by the State of New York, in 1828, with a Portrait (Boston: J.B. Yerrington and Son, Printers, 1850).

———. "What Time of Night It Is." Speech, 1853. Accessed September 17, 2016. Annals of American History Online.

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, ed. "Sojourner Truth, D. 1883 and Olive Gilbert."

Documenting the American South. Last modified 2004. Accessed April 5, 2017. http://docsouth.unc.edu/neh/truth50/summary.html.

Weld, Angelina Grimké. "Testimony of Angelina Grimké Weld." Interview by Theodore Dwight Weld. In The American Negro: His History and Literature, edited by William Loren Katz, 52-57. Compiled by Theodore Dwight Weld. New York: Arno Press and the New York Times, 1968.

"Women in the Antebellum North." In A Companion to the Civil War and Reconstruction.

Malton, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2005. Accessed June 12, 2016. American History Online.

The relevant section of this book discusses the basic historical details of Angelina Grimké’s anti-slavery advocacies: both the experiences she had before becoming an

Wancewicz 32

orator, as well as her experiences while speaking. The section emphasizes that Grimké’s previous experience in political tactics opposing the Indian Removal Act influenced how she opposed slavery. It also notes that most of the opposition she faced while she was speaking against slavery was related to her gender. This book chronicles the experience of different identity groups, like women, before and after the civil war. Because it observes historical events through the lens of elements of identity, like gender, this book is a valuable and qualified source for an identity-politics analysis of Angelina Grimké’s life. This section of the book contributed to basic background knowledge about Angelina Grimké’s political history as well as detailing the discrimination she experienced. Both of these pieces of information give clues as to Grimké’s motivations in advocating first for abolitionism, then for women’s suffrage.

"Worcester Convention." In American History. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, Greenwood Press, Praeger, Libraries Unlimited/Linworth, 2016. Accessed June 10, 2016. ABC-CLIO eBook Collection.

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