Grimké, Angelina Emily (1805-1879)

US abolitionist and women's rights advocate. In 1836 the American Anti-Slavery Society published her Appeal to the Christian Women of the South, an abolitionist pamphlet that brought her both notoriety and threats from her native South. She became a noted speaker against slavery, and controversially, even for the North, spoke before ‘mixed’ audiences of men and women.

The daughter of a slave-owning judge, she was born in Charleston, South Carolina. In 1829 she followed her older sister Sarah Grimké to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. There she became a Quaker and began teaching, but soon devoted herself to the abolition of slavery and to promoting women's rights. In 1835 she wrote a letter supporting William Lloyd Garrison which he published in his abolitionist newspaper The Liberator. She married the abolitionist Theodore Weld in 1838, and concentrated on circulating antislavery petitions and publishing antislavery documents.

In 1840 she moved with her husband and sister to Belleville, New Jersey, where they ran a school from 1848 to 1862. In 1863 they moved to Massachusetts, where Angelina continued to teach 1864-67.