Angelina Weld Grimke

Angelina Weld Grimké was born in Boston, Massachusetts, on February 27, 1880, to Archibald Grimké and Sarah Stanley. Archibald was the son of a White man and a Black slave, and her mother was from a prominent White family. Angelina was named after her great-aunt, Angelina Grimké Weld, the famous abolitionist and women’s rights advocate.

In 1902, Angelina graduated from the Boston Normal School of Gymnastics with a degree in PE. She worked as a gym teacher up until 1907, when she began to teach English.

Throughout her teaching career (she retired in 1926), Angelina wrote poetry and fiction on top of the love letters she wrote to Mamie Burrill.

At sixteen she wrote to Mamie:
“I know you are too young to become my wife, but I hope, darling, that in a few years you will come to me and be my love, my wife! How my brain whirls how my pulse leaps with joys and madness when I think of these two words, ‘my wife.’”

Angelina hid her lesbianism from her father. Therefore, much of her poetry was not published until after she died.