In the late 1820s, Sarah and Angelina Grimké traded their elite position as daughters of a prominent white slaveholding family in Charleston, South Carolina, for a life dedicated to abolitionism and advocacy of women's rights in the North. After the Civil War, discovering that their late brother had had children with one of his slaves, the Grimké sisters helped to educate their nephews and gave them the means to start a new life in postbellum America. The nephews, Archibald and Francis, went on to become well-known African American activists in the burgeoning civil rights movement and the founding of the NAACP. Spanning 150 eventful years, this is an inspiring tale of a remarkable family that transformed itself and America.

In the late 1820s, Sarah and Angelina Grimké traded their elite position as daughters of a prominent white slaveholding family in Charleston, South Carolina, for a life dedicated to abolitionism and advocacy of women's rights in the north. After the Civil War, discovering that their late brother and had children with one of his slaves, The Grimké sisters help to educate their nephews and gave them the means to start a new life. The nephews, Archibald and Francis, went on to become well-known African-American activists who were involved in the burgeoning civil rights movement and the founding of the NAACP. Spanning 150 eventful years, this is an inspiring tale of a remarkable family that transformed itself and America.

Lift Up Thy Voice: the Grimke Family's Journey from Slaveholders to Civil Rights Leaders by Mark Perry is both a biography of the reformers in the Grimke family and a history of the antislavery movement and the sisters’ involvement in women's rights prior to the Civil War and the civil rights movement through the early decades of the 20th century. The book is divided into three sections: (1) the Grimke Sisters which focuses on Sarah and Angelina, (2) the Grimke family which includes the two sisters and Theodore Dwight Weld after the marriage of Angelina and Theodore, and (3) the Grimke brothers, who are mixed race nephews of Sarah and Angela, being the sons of their brother, Henry, and his slave mistress, Nancy Weston.

Sarah and Angelina grew up in a slaveholding family in South Carolina, and both were appalled at the treatment of the slaves. Although there was approximately 13 years difference in age between Sarah and Angelina, the sisters were close; Sarah took care of Angelina practically from her birth. Both sisters struggled with religion in addition to slavery and ended up going north – first to Philadelphia. In the North both became involved in the antislavery movement. Angelina gave lectures concerning the evils of slavery, often to mixed audiences (of women and men) in the North – something women were not supposed to do. Both Angelina and Sarah wrote important treatises on the evils of slavery and also in favor of equality for women. Angelina married Theodore Dwight Weld, who was a leader in the antislavery movement. In the first two sections of the book the antislavery movement and tensions within it from the different factions are discussed.

The last section of the book tells the story of Archibald and Francis Grimke, nephews of Sarah and Angelina, who come north to attend Lincoln University. Angelina becomes aware of them there, and they become part of the Northern Grimke family. Both of these men as adults are very involved with the early civil rights movement to better conditions for the Negroes (as blacks were called back then). The struggles of the different factions of Negroes such as those associated with Booker T. Washington and those associated with W.E.B. Du Bois are discussed in detail. The Grimke brothers advocated a middle ground.

An important and interesting book. Highly recommended. Unfortunately, the paperback edition I have, printed by Penguin Books in 2001, is on very poor quality paper. ( )