Quote#Work
Women of Philadelphia! Allow me as a Southern woman, with much…
Quote byAngelina Grimké · 1805–1879
Commonly attributed — not confirmed in an authoritative edition. Cited on Wikiquote to: Speech at Pennsylvania Hall (1838).
English (original)
Women of Philadelphia! Allow me as a Southern woman, with much attachment to the land of my birth, to entreat you to come up to this work. Especially let me urge you to petition. Men may settle this and other questions at the ballot box, but you have no such right. It is only through petitions that you can reach the legislature.
— Angelina Grimké
More from Angelina Grimké
But remember you must be willing to suffer the loss of all things – willing to be the scorn and reproach of professor and profane. You must obey our great master’s injunction: “Fear not them that kill the body, and after that, have nothing …
But I ask no favors for my sex. I surrender not our claim to equality. All I ask of our brethren is, that they will take their feet from off our necks, and permit us to stand upright …
Human beings have rights, because they are moral beings: the rights of all men grow out of their moral nature; and as all men have the same moral nature, they have essentially the same rights.
I know you do not make the laws but I also know that you are the wives and mothers, the sisters and daughters of those who do.
The time to assert a right is the time when that right is denied.
I appeal to you, my friends, as mothers; Are you willing to enslave your children? You start back with horror and indignation at such a question. But why, if slavery is no wrong to those upon whom it is imposed?