American Experience

I stand before you as a Southerner, exiled from the land of my birth by the sound of the lash and the piteous cry of the slave. I stand before you as a repentant slaveholder. I feel that I owe it to the suffering slave and the deluded master... To do all that I can to overturn a system built up upon the bodies of my countrymen and cemented by the blood and sweat... And tears of my sisters in bonds.

CAROL BERKIN

Of course since they're women, to speak in front of a mixed or, as they called it, "promiscuous" audience of men and women was absolutely forbidden. The abolitionists are ardent desirers of respectability for their movement. So when men start to come to her talks, their antennae go up. And when they tell her to stop talking to men, she says, "No, I have a right."

NARRATOR

The Grimks quickly found themselves at the center of a storm. Ministers condemned them and warned of the dangers that loomed if women moved away from their assigned sphere. Many abolitionists agreed.