Archibald Grimké

Grimké was born into slavery near Charleston, South Carolina, in 1849. He was the eldest of three sons of Nancy Weston, who was also born into slavery, daughter of an enslaved African or African-American female and her white owner Henry W. Grimké, a widower. Henry acknowledged his sons, although he did not manumit (free) them, or make the rest of his family aware of their existence. Archibald's brothers were Francis and John. Henry was a member of a prominent, large slaveholding family in Charleston. His father and relatives were planters and active in political and social circles.

After becoming a widower, Henry moved with Weston to his plantation outside of Charleston. He was a father to his sons, teaching them and Nancy to read and write. In 1852, as he was dying, Henry tried to protect his second family by willing Nancy, who was pregnant with their third child, and their two sons Archibald and Francis to his legal (white) son and heir Montague Grimké, whose mother was Henry's deceased wife. He directed that they "be treated as members of the family,"[1] but Montague never provided well for them.

Henry's sister Eliza, executor of his will, brought the family to Charleston and allowed them to live as if they were free, but she did not aid them financially. Nancy Weston took in laundry and did other work; when the boys were old enough, they attended a public school with free blacks. In 1860 Montague "claimed them as slaves," bringing the boys into his home as servants.[1] Later he hired out both Archibald and Francis. After Francis rebelled, Montague Grimké sold him. Archibald ran away and hid for two years with relatives until after the end of the Civil War.[2]

After the American Civil War ended, the three Grimké boys attended freedmen's schools, where their talents were recognized by the teachers. They gained support to send Archibald and Francis to the North. They studied at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania, established for the education of blacks.[1]

Francis J. Grimké did graduate work at Princeton Theological Seminary and became an ordained Presbyterian minister. He married Charlotte Forten, of the prominent Philadelphia black abolitionist family. She was also an abolitionist and a teacher, and became known for her diaries, written mostly from 1854 to 1864. He headed the 15th Street Presbyterian Church in Washington, DC, for more than 40 years. Francis died in 1939.

The youngest brother, John Grimké, did not stay in school. He went to Florida and cut himself off from his family. He died in 1918.

After getting established with his law practice in Boston, Massachusetts, Archibald Grimké met and married Sarah Stanley, a white woman from the Midwest. They had a daughter, Angelina Weld Grimké, born in 1880. They separated while their daughter was young, and Stanley returned with Angelina to the Midwest when the girl was three. When Angelina was seven, Stanley started working. She brought Angelina back to Archibald, in Boston. The couple never reconciled, and Stanley never saw her daughter again; she committed suicide by poison in 1898.[4]

In 1894, Archibald Grimké was appointed consul to the Dominican Republic. While he held this position, his daughter Angelina lived for years with his brother Francis and his wife Charlotte in Washington, D.C., where Francis was minister of the 15th Street Presbyterian Church.

After graduating from school, Angelina became a teacher and writer. Her essays and poetry were published by The Crisis of the NAACP. In 1916, she wrote the play Rachel, which addressed lynching, in response to a call by the NAACP for works to protest the controversial film The Birth of a Nation. It is one of the first plays by an African American considered to be part of the Harlem Renaissance. In addition, she wrote poetry, some of which is now considered the first lesbian work by an African American.

Archibald Grimké lived and worked in the Hyde Park neighborhood of Boston area most of his career. Beginning in the 1880s, he began to get active in politics and speaking out about the rise of white supremacy following the end of Reconstruction in the South. From 1883–1885 he was editor of the Hub, a Republican newspaper that tried to attract black readers. Archibald supported equal rights for blacks, both in the paper and in public lectures, which were popular in the nineteenth century. He became increasingly active in politics, and was chosen for the Republican Party's state convention in 1884. That year he was also appointed to the board of Westborough Insane Hospital, a state hospital.[5] Archibald became involved in the women's rights movement, which his aunts had supported, and addressed it in the Hub. He was elected as president of the Massachusetts Woman Suffrage Association. Believing that the Republicans were not doing enough, he left the party in 1886.[2] In 1889, he joined the staff of the Boston Herald as a special writer.[6]

In the South, the situation for Blacks was deteriorating, and Archibald continued the struggle against racism, allying at times with other major leaders of the day. He had also become involved in Frederick Douglass' National Council of Colored People, a predecessor to the NAACP, which grappled with issues of education for blacks, especially in the South. Archibald disagreed with Booker T. Washington about emphasizing industrial and agricultural education for freedmen (the South still had a primarily agricultural economy). He believed there needed to be opportunities for academic and higher education such as he had.

In 1901, with several other men he started The Guardian, a newspaper in which they could express their views.[2] They selected William Monroe Trotter as editor. Together Grimké and Trotter also organized the Boston Literary and Historical Association, which at the time was a gathering of men opposed to Booker T. Washington's views.[2] For a time he was allied with W.E.B. Du Bois, but Grimké continued to make his own way between the two groups.

Despite earlier conflict with Washington and his followers, in 1905, Grimké started writing for The New York Age, the leading black paper; it was allied with Washington. Archibaldwrote about national issues from his own point of view, for instance, urging more activism and criticizing President Theodore Roosevelt for failing to adequately support black troops in Brownsville, Texas, where they were accused of starting a riot.

Continuing his interest in intellectual work, he served as president of the American Negro Academy from 1903 to 1919, which supported African-American scholars and promoted higher education for blacks.[2] He published several papers with them, dealing with issues of the day, such as his analysis in "Modern Industrialism and the Negroes of the United States" (1908).[7] He believed that capitalism as practiced in the United States could help freedmen who left agriculture to achieve independence and true freedom.

In 1907 he became involved with the Niagara Movement and later with the NAACP, both of which were founded by Du Bois. Men continued to struggle to find the best way to deal with racism and advance equal rights, at a time when lynching of black men in the South continued.

After his daughter graduated from college, Archibald became increasingly active as a leader in the NAACP, which was founded in 1909. First he was active in Boston, for instance, writing letters in protest of proposed federal legislation. to prohibit interracial marriages. (The legislation was not passed.) In 1913, he was recruited by national leaders to become the president of the Washington, DC branch and moved to the capital with his daughter Angelina.[2] His brother Francis and his wife Charlotte still lived there.

Grimké led the public protest in Washington, D.C., against the segregation of federal offices under President Woodrow Wilson, who acceded to wishes of other Southerners on his cabinet. Grimké testified before Congress against it in 1914 but did not succeed in gaining changes.[2] About this time, he also became a national vice-president of the NAACP. The organization supported the US in World War I, but Grimké highlighted the racial discrimination against blacks in the military and worked to change it.[2]

He fell ill in 1928. At the time, he and Angelina were living with his brother Francis, by then a widower. His daughter and brother cared for him until his death in 1930.

• 1919, the NAACP awarded him the Spingarn Medal for his life work for racial equality.[2]
• In 1934, the Phelps Colored Vocational School was renamed Grimke Elementary School in his honor. The school was closed in 1989 and the building served as headquarters for the Washington D.C. Fire and Corrections Departments until 2012, when the main building was left vacant. The gymnasium has housed the African American Civil War Museum since 2010.

• Books
  • Charles Sumner, the scholar in politics. New York: Funk & Wagnalls. 1892.
  • William Lloyd Garrison, the abolitionist. New York: Funk & Wagnalls. 1891.
• Pamphlets and articles (most recent first)
  • The shame of America : or, The Negro's case against the Republic. Occasional papers, no. 21. Washington, D.C.: American Negro Academy. 1924. Retrieved January 9, 2021.
  • Memorandum submitted on behalf of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People by Archibald H. Grimke, President of the Washington D.C. Branch, in re equitable provision for the buildings and grounds of the colored public schools of the Capital of the Nation in the Appropriation Bill for 1919. National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. 1919.
  • "The Sex Question and Race Segregation". Papers of the American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers, No. 18-19. Washington, D.C.: American Negro Academy. 1916.
  • The Ultimate Criminal. Annual address. Occasional Papers No. 17. Washington, D.C.: American Negro Academy. 1915.
  • The Ballotless Victim of One-Party Governments. Occasional Papers No. 16. Washington, D.C.: American Negro Academy. 1913.
  • Charles Sumner Centenary. Historical address. Occasional Papers No. 14. Washington, D.C.: American Negro Academy. 1911.
  • "Abraham Lincoln and the Fruitage of his Proclamation". American Missionary. 63 (2): 51–53. February 1909.
  • Modern industrialism and the Negroes of the United States. Occasional Papers, No. 12. Washington, D.C.: American Negro Academy. 1908.
  • "The Heart of the Race Problem". The Arena. 35: 29–32, 274–278, 606–610. 1906.
  • "The Meaning and Need of the Movement to Reduce Southern Representation". The Negro and the Elective Franchise. Occasional Papers, No. 11. Washington, D.C.: American Negro Academy. 1905.
  • "Why Disenfranchisement Is Bad". The Atlantic. 94: 72–81. July 1904.
  • Right on the Scaffold, or The Martyrs of 1822. Occasional Papers, No. 7. On Denmark Vesey. American Negro Academy. 1901.CS1 maint: others (link)
  • "Abraham Lincoln". Howard's American Magazine. 4 (8): 352–358. March 1900.
  • "Modern Industrialism and the Negroes of the United States". Report of the Hampton Negro Conference. 1899. pp. 46–51.
  • "Open letter to President McKinley by colored people of Massachusetts". Boston. 1899.
  • A eulogy on Wendell Phillips : Delivered in Tremont Temple, Boston, April 9, 1884. Together with the proceedings incident thereto, letters, etc. Boston. 1884.

• Negro Academy

• Thomas, Rhondda R; Ashton, Susanna, eds. (2014). "Archibald Grimké (1849-1930)". The South Carolina Roots of African American Thought. Columbia, South Carolina: University of South Carolina Press. pp. 86–92. ISBN 9781611173147.
• Perry, Mark (2001). Lift up Thy Voice: The Grimké Family's Journey from Slaveholders to Civil Rights Leaders. New York: Viking Press. ISBN 0-14-200103-1.
• Bruce, Dickson D., Jr. Archibald Grimke: Portrait of a Black Independent, Baton Rouge, La: Louisiana State University Press, 1993.
• Starr, William W. "Bio of black activist restores his prestige," The State (Aug. 22, 1993), 4F.

• Works by Archibald Grimké at Project Gutenberg
• Works by or about Archibald Grimké at Internet Archive