Charlotte Forten Grimke
Her mother died when she was very young, and she was raised by her grandmother. She lead a protected life. She wasn’t allowed to attend Philadelphia's segregated schools, but was taught by private tutors at home.
In May of 1854, Charlotte’s father, Robert Forten, sent her to live with a prominent Black abolitionist family, Charles and Sarah Remond, at Salem, Massachusetts.
Upon her arrival at the Remonds, Charlotte enrolled in the Higginson Grammar School for Girls under its principal, Mary Shepard. The Higginson school was known for its emphasis on critical thinking in studying history, geography, drawing and cartography. She was the only non-white student out of 200.
About that same time, an escaped slave, Anthony Burns, was returned to slavery by Federal marshals under the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850. This incident prompted Robert Forten to move his family to Canada, but he left Charlotte in Salem with the Remonds.
Charlotte graduated from Higginson Grammar School in 1855, and then she passed the entrance exam for the Salem Normal School. She was the first black to enroll, and was determined to acquire skills to help herself and her race.
She had written to her father in Canada for permission to attend the Normal school. When she finally received no response, he ordered her to return to Philadelphia immediately. The principal urged her to write to him again, and Mary Shepard offered to loan her the money to continue her education. Robert Forten eventually agreed to allow Charlotte to attend, but he didn’t offer to pay her expenses.
In mid-June 1856, a month before final exams, Charlotte received a teaching assignment at the integrated Epes Grammar School, making her the first black teacher of white students in Salem, Massachusetts. During this time, her talent for poetry emerged, and her work was published in antislavery publications, such as the Liberator and Anglo African magazine.
The following year, tuberculosis forced Charlotte to leave her teaching job and return to Philadelphia. The school was unhappy to see her go and promised her a position when she returned. She accepted an invitation to move in with Caroline Putman, Charles Remond's sister. Her health continued to deteriorate, and for many months, she lay bedridden.
After a long recuperation, Charlotte was finally able to return to Salem in September 1859. She resumed her teaching career, this time at the Higginson School under her mentor, Mary Shepard. She also enrolled In Salem Normal School’s Advanced Program.
With Abraham Lincoln’s election to the presidency in the autumn of 1860, the outbreak of Civil War seemed inevitable. Charlotte longed to contribute to the Union cause.
Early in 1862, she learned that the Port Royal area of South Carolina was full of fleeing slaves, and some 2000 black children, who barely knew the alphabet. She applied to the Philadelphia Port Royal Educational Commission. She was accepted and headed south on October 27, 1862.
In the midst of the Civil War, Charlotte arrived at “Oaklands,” an abandoned plantation on St. Helena Island, off the coast of South Carolina. About 140 freed children gathered for school in a single-room Baptist church nearby.
As she began teaching, she found that many of her pupils spoke only Gullah. And though she yearned to feel a bond with her kinsmen, her upbringing and education set her apart. She actually had more in common with the white abolitionists there.
Charlotte wrote of her students:
“The long, dark night of the past, with all its sorrows and its fears, was forgotten; and for the Future—the eyes of these freed children see no clouds in it. It is full of sunlight, they think, and they trust in it, perfectly.”
A precarious place for a volunteer, St. Helena was often rampant with yellow fever. The danger of a Confederate attack threatened constantly, and the Union soldiers seemed less than protective. Charlotte noted that they “talked flippantly and sneeringly of the Negroes.”
The few Southern whites remaining in the area openly showed their hatred, and Charlotte carried a pistol after someone made an attempt to break into her sleeping quarters. “The thought of falling into the hands of the Rebels,” she wrote, “was horrible in the extreme.”
On January 1, 1863, when the Union commander read the Emancipation Proclamation to the community at port royal, the blacks responded by singing “My Country ‘Tis of Thee,” taught them by Charlotte and her companions.
Under physical and emotional stress, Charlotte fell ill and had to leave St. Helena after two years. In 1864, her essays, Life on the Sea Islands, were published in The Atlantic Monthly, which brought the work of the Port Royal Experiment to the attention of its Northern readers.
After the Civil War, Charlotte worked with the Freedmen’s Relief Association in Boston to help former slaves find jobs and homes.
At the age of 41, on December 19 1878, Charlotte married Francis Grimké, the mulatto nephew of abolitionists, Sarah and Angelina Grimké. Francis was a law student and a Presbyterian minister who used his church as a civil rights platform.
The Grimkés made their home in Washington DC, and it became a social and intellectual gathering place for their friends and associates. Charlotte gave birth to a daughter, Theodora Cornelia, in June of 1880, but she died as an infant.
Charlotte then helped her husband in his ministry and organized a women's missionary group. Her husband became pastor at the Fifteenth Street Presbyterian Church in Washington DC, and Charlotte continued to fight for education and equality for African Americans.
After many years as an invalid, Charlotte Forten Grimké died in 1914 at her home in Washington DC. She was 77 years old.
Copyright © 2007 Maggie MacLean
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