The Grimkes by Kerri K. Greenidge - a Review

Kerri K. Greenidge, The Grimkes: The Legacy of Slavery in an American Family (Liveright [W. W. Norton], 2023).

I love it when books like this hit the shelves because them I can use them to offer my students a new perspective on a well-worn story, which if anything, gets them to think about things in different ways. I used to teach the story of Sarah and Angelina Grimke along the more traditional path - in laudatory form, noting that these two white women - daughters of a powerful South Carolina slave holder - bravely broke from their cultural mores and became champions of justice: abolitionists and advocates of women’s rights when it was entirely uncustomary for southern white women to make such a stand. The Grimkes were exceptional, and in many ways, they proved the rule that most white southern slave holders embraced the institution.

What I never taught (until now, of course) was the life of the extended Grimke family - particularly the story of Sarah and Angelina’s mixed-race nephews, Archibald and Frank (sons of Sarah and Angelina’s brother Henry and an enslaved woman, Nancy Weston). Quite honestly, I left them out of the story because I did not really know anything about them, which I think says quite a lot about how I understood the Grimkes. It turns out, the nephews were pretty successful in their own right - and leaders in their community.

Greenidge investigates the multi-dimensional aspects of this remarkable American family over the course of generations. She underscores their successes and their failures and particularly notes how the legacy of the slave system and a 19th-century emphasis on race informed so much of their world view. What Greenridge suggests, that for all of the exceptional qualities of the Grimke family, they were in other ways products of a system that followed the racist proclivities of the era. This, to me anyway, is what marks this book as a valuable addition to the literature: Greenidge adds depth to the story.

Speaking directly to Greenidge’s point: she argues that it is precisely because of their privilege as white women of the slave-holding South that the Grimke sisters were afforded to opportunity to do what they did - even as they most vociferously denounced the institution that provided them the means to advance and claim a societal voice of justice. Furthermore, they cast a paternalistic shadow in condescending tones - playing on assumptions and the racist sensibilities typical of the 19th century. The Grimkes were far more likely to castigate the institution for what it did to white owners while ignoring violence against black people. As for the Grimke nephews, despite their ancestry, they seemed to accept and assert the social hierarchy of race, positioning themselves as part of a cadre of “elite” blacks against what they might call the “negro masses” of uneducated, unsophisticated, and not incidentally, darker black people of the post-slavery era.

Damn, when you think about it, the book forces us to reconsider the oft-framed heroics of progressive idealism. Sure, their intentions seem sound: progress, racial uplift, and all that - but the execution is manifestly cringe-worthy, at least from our perspective. But isn’t that just the thing? These folks are never going to meet our standards, so perhaps we should not be so disappointed with them, we should just better understand the people in question as human beings operating within a particular 19th-century context. The important point is that this story humanizes a movement beyond the faceless abstractions of “progress” and shows us the manifestations of certain ideas in the context of a complicated reality intersecting with personal idiosyncrasy, intuitiveness, ambition, and even self-preservation. In the end, we meet the Grimkes in all their humanity, flaws and all. My question, if I ever have the pleasure of grabbing a cup of coffee with the author: should we really expect them to act otherwise? My kudos to the author over the same coffee: I am thankful that she revealed a far more complex narrative than we often hear - well beyond the feel-good stories of attempted racial egalitarianism.

Greenidge argues that this story should resonate in the 21st century, as she claims the promises of the Civil Rights era have fallen far short of their goals. We might debate this - as there are many who believe the movement unquestionably made bold leaps and that 50 years (or so) hence many are reaping the benefits of racial advancement. But on the other hand, her point is well-taken - as any brush up agains the news will clearly suggest that much of our political discourse is mired in racial assumptions, often animosity…what Americans can’t seem to move past. At the very least this book asks readers to confront what we think we know about progress, reform, and indeed…reformers.

With compliments,

Keith