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Jul 23, 2020AnneCarolineDrake rated this title 5 out of 5 stars
A very timely and fascinating read about the early days of the abolitionist movement in the United States which was launched by Mennonite/Quakers at the 1688 Germantown, PA Protest Against Slavery. Their petition was minimized and ignored by the Quakers until 1754. It planted the seeds for the Declaration of Independence. Angelina and Sarah Grimke grew up in Charleston, SC in a slave-owning family. This book is a fictionalized account of how they became leading abolitionists and feminists a decade before the Senecca Falls convention in 1848. Sarah Grimke and Lucretia Mott belonged to the same Quaker Meeting group in Philadelphia. I was most intrigued by the tension between the abolitionist and feminist movements which inspired Sarah Grimke to say to her soon-to-be-brother-in-law Theodore Weld: "How can you ask us to go back to our parlors? To turn our backs on ourselves and on our own sex? We don't wish the movement to split, of course we don't ~ it saddens me to think of it ~ but we can do little for the slave as long as we're under the feet of men. Do what you have to do, censure us, withdraw your support, we'll press on anyway. Now, sirs, kindly take your feet off our necks." SCOTUS Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has made the last sentence infamous. I loved that the author opted to weave together the stories of Sarah and Hetty/Handful, the slave Sarah received for her 11th birthday. The real Hetty died young, but the abhorrence Sarah felt about the gift fueled her mission in life. Sarah lived to see Lincoln sign the Emancipation Proclamation, but the Equal Rights Amendment has yet to be passed.