Angelina Grimke: Rhetoric, Identity, and the Radical Imagination

by Stephen Howard Browne

Abolitionist, women's rights activist, and social reformer, Angelina Grimké (1805-79) was among the first women in American history to seize the public stage in pursuit of radical social reform. "I will lift up my voice like a trumpet," she proclaimed, "and show this people their transgressions." And when she did lift her voice in public, on behalf of the public, she found that, in creating herself, she might transform the world. In the process, Grimké crossed the wires of race, gender, and power, and produced explosions that lit up the world of antebellum reform. Among the most remarkable features of Angelina Grimké's rhetorical career was her ability to stage public contests for the soul of America—bringing opposing ideas together to give them voice, depth, and range to create new and more compelling visions of social change. 
      Angelina Grimké: Rhetoric, Identity, and the Radical Imagination is the first full-length study to explore the rhetorical legacy of this most unusual advocate for human rights. Stephen Browne examines her epistolary and oratorical art and argues that rhetoric gave Grimké a means to fashion not only her message but her very identity as a moral force.

201 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1999

Reviews

[Melody Schwarting · Rating 4 out of 5]

In my thesis on Angelina Grimké, I face the sad challenge of defending her significance in American history. Though prominent in her own time, known around the nation as a rousing abolitionist, she has been forgotten by many. The masculine bias of history in her own time, lasting until the 1960s convinced publishers that there was a field for academic work on historical women, contributed much to the oversight. Many books on race and religion in the United States overlook Grimké completely, even though she would buttress their theses. Grimké does not appear in Mark Noll's The Civil War as a Theological Crisis, though she was perhaps the most biblically-minded abolitionist. Her name is absent in Ibram X. Kendi's otherwise stellar Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America, though she was the most vocal white woman on racial prejudice in her time.* Grimké is not present in Paul Harvey's Bounds of Their Habitation: Race and Religion in American History, though race and religion were her life's work and she was infamous for it.

I say all of this to explain how much I appreciate Browne's valuable contribution to Grimké studies. He argues, more strongly than I dare, that Grimké is very important to American history. Browne's close examination of Grimké's rhetoric is fruitful for anyone studying abolitionist argumentation. He has a few oversights, namely overlooking her use of biblical quotations and allusions, but overall provides a constructive, thought-provoking contribution to American history. I don't think I've ever read anything on the history of communication before, so this was particularly fascinating. Browne's examination of her identity was much more useful than I expected. Explaining the self-understanding of a historical figure is a tricky topic, but Browne handles it well. He manages to present Grimké as she was without becoming a biographer. He handles Grimké's chinks with sympathy and grace, while avoiding lionization. His argument is built on deep textual research, and thus is easy to follow. Particularly, the points he made about violence in Grimké's life and writings were enlightening. He connected her responses to violence against abolitionists to her background in Charleston.

A must-read for any Grimké scholar, and a great resource for anyone looking at 1830s abolitionism.

*Though Kendi's book covers racist ideas rather than anti-racist ideas, he does cover some anti-racist thinkers like Ida B. Wells-Barnett. Grimké's anti-prejudice writings would still have supported his work, since she explained to white women the social problems experienced by black women--what we now call micro-aggressions. Colonization is one of Kendi's topics, and Grimké said a lot about how prejudiced that movement was: a slaveholder-supported effort to end chattel slavery in the US by sending black people, even free black people, to a US-funded colony in Africa.

[Nora · Rating 4 out of 5]

this was a good essay collection! i found it very helpful